Mysterious, Ghostly Blue Lights Known as Will-o-the-Wisp May Just be Methane Bubbles

For centuries, will-o’-the-wisp has puzzled scientists and vacationers alike. According to folklore, it’s the product of faeries, demons, and spirits. More just lately, scientists have attributed will-o’-the-wisp, in any other case generally known as ignis fatuus, which means “foolish flame” in Latin, to extra earthly origins. However, questions stay over how precisely these ghostly blue lights intermittently happen.

Now, researchers writing within the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) have proffered a extra evidence-based answer to this age-old conundrum – methane bubbles spontaneously igniting in a course of known as microlightning.

Flaming Blue Will-O’-The-Wisp or Methane Bubbles?

While earlier generations could have turned to supernatural explanations, there’s now a robust consensus throughout the scientific group that hyperlinks the flickering blue gentle to methane launched by natural matter because it decays. It is assumed that the methane ignites when it interacts with oxygen within the air, producing a “cool flame.”

However, it isn’t absolutely understood how precisely the methane ignites within the first place, because the power required to set off this course of is simply too excessive an quantity to happen naturally. Previous makes an attempt to elucidate this have appeared to phosphine or static electrical energy, however these stay unproven.

Instead, the researchers, writing in PNAS, appeared to a phenomenon investigated in an earlier examine (printed in Science Advances), which reveals that tiny water droplets can accrue cost that’s then launched spontaneously — a course of generally known as microlightning.

“Microlightning between methane microbubbles offers a natural ignition mechanism for methane oxidation under ambient conditions,” the researchers defined within the PNAS examine.

“This discovery supports a long-suspected link between electrified interfaces and spontaneous cool flames, and it provides a physically grounded explanation for the occurrence of ignis fatuus,” the examine authors continued.

Read More: Early Accounts of Whales and Manatees May Have Inspired Mermaid Folklore

Methane Microbubble Makers

To take a look at the speculation, the researchers constructed a microbubble generator that generated methane-air bubbles and blasted them right into a pot of water. Using high-speed imaging, the workforce noticed “transient, localized flashes” lasting less than a millisecond, which they explain are “consistent with electrical discharges.”

The reason the microbubbles were able to accumulate charge is thanks to the curved boundary that exists between the gas and the liquid — the greater the curve, the greater the electric field at the boundary or “interface.” A discharge occurs when two microbubbles with opposite charges approach one another, which, in turn, can cause the gas to ignite a “cool flame” (the faint blue luminescence characteristic of will-o’-the-wisp).

“These discharges initiate nonthermal oxidation of methane, producing luminescence and measurable heat under ambient conditions,” the researchers explained in the study.

The team tested the reaction of regular old air bubbles and found that they, too, trigger flashes.

This, they say, suggests that the reaction is the result of interactions between two oppositely charged particles and is not due to the gas itself, although methane did appear to enhance the intensity of the reactions and increase the frequency.

According to the researchers, these results could be the missing piece of the puzzle and help explain how methane in marshlands and wetlands is able to produce blue luminescence spontaneously.

“For centuries, faint blue flames known as ignis fatuus or will-o’-the-wisps have danced above marshes, cemeteries, and wetlands,” they explained in the study.

Adding: “Our findings offer a scientific basis for ignis fatuus and reveal a general mechanism by which electrified interfaces can drive redox reactions in natural environments without the need for external ignition sources.”

Other Explanations for Will-o’-the-Wisp

But this is not the only explanation recently put forward. Researchers writing in the peer-reviewed Brazilian journal Quim Nova argue that will-o’-the-wisp may be “extinct,” pointing to the fact that there have few, if any, reliable sightings in modern times.

Instead, the paper states, old-fashioned torches carried by travellers could have acted as a source of ignition and “the abandonment of fire in favor of night lightning may hold the secret to this mystery of ignis fatuus’s extinction.”

Read More: Old Wives’ Tales to Predict Weather: What’s Based in Science and What’s Just Folklore?

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