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Marfa Lights Like Warmer Nights

Whether or not CE-III Marfa Lights are caused by pterosaur-like creatures similar to the ones in Papua New Guinea, we need to determine if they are very likely caused by any kind of creature, or if they could be non-biological. We also need to consider the warm-blooded question, well handled on this post: “How do Pterosaurs Survive the Cold?”

The data recorded by James Bunnell is priceless. The 52 sightings recorded by his cameras, from late in 2000 through late in 2008, give us detailed weather data, including the temperatures when sightings began, what he calls “at start.” I list totals, by percentage of total, for four temperature gradations:

  1. 32 F or colder: 11.5%
  2. 32.1-39.9 F: 4%
  3. 40.0-49.9 F: 11.5%
  4. 50.0 or higher: 73%

That coorelates well with nocturnal hunting by predators that prefer reasonable temperatures, obviously. Could this be related to ground temperature in a way supporting some kind of energy from the earth? Bunnell’s data does not smile on that conjecture, for when the total sightings are subtotaled by season of the year it shows 43% in the Spring, hardly a season to be noted for high ground temperature. By comparison, only 19% of the sightings were in the summer.

Examining the details from the eight sightings in Winter, we see the following, in order from coldest to hottest, remembering that this refers to the temperature when the sightings first began on the nights in question:

21.2 F., 24.8 F., 24.8 F., 32.9 F., 37.4 F., 43.7 F., 48.2 F., 82.4 F.

We see that five of the eight are above freezing, which is notabley moderate for that high desert area of southwest Texas, on Winter nights. The February 9, 2001, reading of 82.7 F. looks out of place, but I presume it was an unseasonably warm night.

Could the warmer temperatures be related to a non-biological energy source closely related to the atmosphere? There’s a problem with that potential coorelation. In my post “Analyzing Data for a Marfa Lights Interpretation,” I mentioned the nights of July 14-15, 2006, (July 15th and 16th Universal Time) which involved appearances only one minute apart, 38 and 37 minutes after sunset. But the weather differed in temperature, Dew point, humidity, and wind speed. How could such a close coorelation be the result of something primarily related to the atmosphere, when atmospheric conditions were so different?

Everything points to a group of intelligent bioluminescent flying predators that have some preference to warmer temperatures, but that still need to hunt at night, even when it is colder and less ideal. The potential complexities involving multiple species of prey and possibly more than one hunting technique, depending on weather and prey, make this a difficult puzzle, but the data does well support this biological interpretation.

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Analyzing Data for a Marfa Lights Interpretation

In Occam’s Razor and Marfa Lights, I wrote about comparing the fourth hypothesis of James Bunnell with the “nocturnal flying predators” hypothesis. Simplicity awarded the flying predators with victory, for “Electromagnetic Vortexes” requires too many unknown entities. Now I would like to write about data accumulated by Bunnell and included in the “B1” table of his book, Hunting Marfa Lights.

First, we need to come to an understanding about the potential uses of bioluminescence of large flying creatures. They are not resticted to hunting prey. Other potential uses may include courtship and protecting territory. Although some reports of Marfa Lights include a word like “play,” it would be too speculative to deal with that possibility at present. We also need to understand that intelligent predators that hunt as a group may use more than one technique in their group hunting.

We need to understand that this predator hypothesis need not involve living pterosaurs.

We also need to understand that the cameras set up by Bunnell cover only a limited area of the plain where Marfa Lights are reported, and there may have been periods of time in which one or more cameras were not functioning or functioning at less than their optimum level. Within the hypothesis of bioluminescent flying predators, we need to consider these limitations.

Table “B1” of Bunnell’s book is filled to the brim with data, including start times and end times for the mystery lights. Other data include “Was moon up?” and wind direction, as well as temperature, humidity, visibility, and sunset times.

For the moment, I would like to analyze one small portion of the data.

We will presume, for the moment, that a group of bioluminescent flying predators spend much of their glowing time, but not all of it, hunting one or more types of prey in different areas that include southwest Texas and possibly adjoining areas of Mexico. I say “much” because there may be occasional courtship behavior and terrritorial disputes in which bioluminescence is manifest.

We will also presume that this group has more than one, but not many, sleeping locations in this part of North America. At night, they may fly to a number of close areas surrounding particular sleeping areas. After a certain number of days or weeks they may move to another sleeping area, with its attendant surrounding hunting areas.

We will also presume that this group of predators have more than one hunting technique, depending not only on the kind of prey but on the conditions of the hunt. For example, bats may be hunted when they are feeding on insects in the air or when they are hibernating in a cave, necessitating a different technique for hunting the same prey.

We now notice the resulting complexity of potential behaviors and area patterns resulting from the above conditions. On any particular night, it would be unlikely that even one of Bunnell’s cameras would pick up even one CE type mystery light. But we have room for at least one prediction.

Over a period of months, some of the nocturnal hunting excursions may be especially successful, even if the prey is a species of small animal like a bat, in particular the Big Brown Bat that is common in this part of Texas. This bat is “big” only when compared with other bats in this area of North America, for it is only about half a pound in weight. What can we predict after an especially successful hunt? The next night may see those predators hunting in the same area or a nearby area. If the successful hunt were early in the evening, soon after sunset, the second night may also be early in the evening.

We now examine some of Bunnell’s data for camera recordings of significant mystery light appearances from late 2000 through late 2008. About 20% of those nights involve the return of mystery lights on at least two consecutive nights, never more than three nights in succession, and only one occurance being that maximum length. When the night-successions themselves are counted, it is only about 11%.

The following dates are in Universal Time, not Texas dates, although the sunset times are local for Texas time. Sorry if there is any confusion.

What is most important is this: 75% of those one-night successions involved starting times less than twenty minutes apart, for example one hour and nineteen minutes after sunset on May 8, 2003 and one hour and thirty-eight minutes after sunset on May 9, 2003. On July 15-16, 2006, mystery lights first appeared only about one minute apart: thirty-eight and thirty-seven minutes after sunset, respectively.

How important is that one minute difference? First I’d like to get just a bit off the subject. When Bunnell’s cameras record a mystery light or lights on any particular night, it is usually after weeks or months since the last recording. An exception is the occasional one or two nights in a row of appearances. But there seems to be a total absence of 3-10 nights between appearances. That would be expected of a group of roaming predators, for they change hunting locations after one or two nights in one area, not soon returning to an area in which most of the easy prey may have already been recently caught.

Getting back to that one minute difference between July 15th and 16th, in 2006, we now look at a typical difference in when a mystery light first appears after sunset. The average difference in first appearance after sunset, between sighting nights, those which may be as much as months apart, is two hours and thirty-six minutes, which is a lot more than one minute. This involves those night successions that were more than seven days apart, and 89% of them were. I found that about 79% of those were more than thirty minutes apart and about 93% were more than five minutes apart, with the smallest difference being one succession at three minutes apart. Turning away from those successions that were weeks apart, one minute, for the July 15-16 succession, is extremely close.

How is that July 15-16, 2006, event coorelated with the bioluminescent flying predators hypothesis? On the first night, hunting was very successful, so on the second night the predators left their den a minute earlier, arriving only 37 minutes after sunset, instead of 38, to hunt in that same general area.

As stated in my previous post, “Occam’s Razor and Marfa Lights,” Bunnell’s best hypothesis is called “Electromagnetic Vortexes.” But it seems to me that it could be difficult to explain the above data with the EV hypothesis. We now look at other data, relevant to these two appearances 24 hours apart.

On the second night, the temperature at the beginning of the appearance was two degrees C. cooler than the first night. There were other differences: “Temperature Change (day high to ML Start)” and Dew Point and Humidity and wind speed were all significantly different. Why would a non-living energy, under such varied conditions, begin its appearance at almost the same time after sunset on two successive nights? “Bioluminescent flying predators” wins again.

For more information, see “Lions, Pterodactyls, and Marfa Ghost Lights.”

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Occam’s Razor and Marfa Lights

Occam’s Razor, according to Wikipedia, “is a principle that generally recommends selecting the competing hypothesis that makes the fewest new assumptions, when the hypotheses are equal in other respects. For instance, they must both sufficiently explain available data in the first place.” We will examine Occam’s Razon as it relates to the short post by Richard Connelly, on the Houston Press blog: “Marfa Lights Solved!! It’s A Giant Bird.”

First, Connelly’s post was very short, about six sentences, none of which has any reasoning. He does not reason but only makes fun of an idea, the idea that Marfa Lights are from bioluminescent flying creatures. He does not mention “bioluminescent” but that post must surely have been elicited by the press release “Unmasking a Flying Predator in Texas,” which promotes the idea that nocturnal glowing flying creatures PROBABLY cause the more mysterious dancing lights around Marfa, Texas. In that press release, as I recall, the word “pterosaur” is used as a possible explanation, with a more assertive word, something like “probable,” applied to a general concept of unknown bioluminescent flying predators.

Occam’s Razor does not apply for two reasons, the first of which is this: From Connelly’s perspective, we are not comparing hypotheses that are of generally equal value in explaining something. Previous to his exposure to this new Marfa Lights explanation of nocturnal predators, he probably had no idea that anybody was investigating possible bioluminescent pterosaurs living in modern times. Therefore, to him, it seemed an absurd proposition, compared to the apparent conclusion of a group of physics students who had observed car headlights near Marfa, Texas, for a few nights.

But that is a small technicality of language. The weightier matter consists of comparing how competing explanations fit characteristics of the CE-III mystery lights that a few scientists have observed and analyzed over a number of years. Car headlights are irrelevant here, a fact entirely overlooked by Connelly. Not all lights around Marfa, Texas, are from night mirage effects of car headlights. Any train, meteor, ranch-house light, campfire, and flashlight can appear mysterious under some conditions. Those students never came close to proving that all lights called “mysterious” around Marfa, Texas, come from car headlights.

In “Part Two” of James Bunnell’s book Hunting Marfa Lights, one section is labeled “What Are Chemical-Electromagnetic MLs?” (ML stands for mystery lights.) He examines four hypotheses, giving “pro” and “con” for each. I now summarize the “con” of these four, mostly in my own words. Before proceeding, keep in mind that CE-III is only one variation of Chemical-Electromagnetic mystery lights. They are the sub-type-three that travel across the countryside, above bushes but below the background mesas.

Hypothesis 1: Byproducts of Solar Storms

Solar wind is a plasma, particle streams of ionized hydrogen and helium shooting away from the sun at over a million miles per hour. Our planet’s magnetic field protects our atmosphere from this constant bombardment, fortunately, but the solar wind reshapes that magnetic field, making the sunlit side thin and the dark side of earth much deeper. Bunnell suggests that since this high altitude interaction between the earth’s magnetosphere and solar wind causes Northern Lights and Southern Lights, perhaps it might cause CE lights, or at least be part of a larger picture.

There’s a major problem with this hypothesis, recognized and explained by Bunnell: The sun’s coronal mass ejections (CME’s) do not correlate with sightings of CE mystery lights around Marfa. I see this as an insurmountable problem.

Hypothesis 2: Plasma Descending from the Inner Van Allen Belt

This is complex, so if you’re interested read Hunting Marfa Lights, pages 176-179. It has several problems, and Bunnell says, at the end, “This hypothesis appears unlikely to be correct.” I agree, for there are too many problems with that hypothesis.

Hypothesis 3: Liberation of Pyrophoric Chemicals

Bunnell mentions that pyrophoric chemicals involve “autoignition of a single chemical whenever it comes into contact with oxygen in the atmosphere.” That would seem to explain repeated on-off states of the CE Marfa Lights. He admits the serious problem that appears when we examine the type-three, however, for those mystery lights travel cross-country into the wind. Some of those flights—I say “flights” but Bunnell seems to prefer “travel”—he admits are of “long duration and long range” and involve replenishment during those long trips across country. I agree with Bunnell that this pyrophoric hypothesis “does not stretch far enough to account for the full range of observed ML behaviors.”

Hypothesis 4: Electromagnetic Vortexes

To be precise, here is the heading: “MLs are electromagnetic vortexes that burn chemicals to produce light.” It really requires reading Bunnell’s book, pages 181-187. Perhaps this is, at present, the best non-living explanation. But Bunnell admits “this hypothesis is my speculation.” Although it he believes it best fits “the entire range of Type CE characteristics,” we need to keep “best fit” in context: All other non-living explanations fail.

Hypothesis #4 requires a combination of energetic vortexes and combustion of chemicals that are emitted from the ground. Both of them are speculative, yet both are necessary for this to work. I appreciate Bunnell’s research in the field and the potential that this part of southwest Texas may have for unusual geology. Of course we may yet see new discoveries involving vortexes and gas venting. But I agree with his admission that this hypothesis is speculative. I doubt that it has sufficient basis for considering it a mature hypothesis.

Applying Occam’s Razor

Isaac Newton said that “we are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.” Perhaps a definition more popular to modern scientists would be something like this: “when comparing two competing theories or hypotheses that make the same predictions, the simpler one is given priority.” That does not mean we should automatically flush down the loser. We simply give more time and attention to the winner.

We now apply Occam’s Razor, comparing Bunnell’s Hypothesis #4 with the “nocturnal flying predators” hypothesis. Both of them seem to account for the ME-III events, so let us see which is simpler.

Bunnell’s H-4 requires two questionable things to interact. The bioluminescent-nocturnal-flying-predators hypothesis, “BNFP,” involves a questionable element, flying creatures not classified in biology, and an unquestionable element, prey such as bats, snakes, mice, and other small living things in southwest Texas. Of course, a predator need not always be hunting. They sometimes mate and compete for mates. Some predators even play. To the best of my knowledge, these aspects of group-predator behaviors can account for all the CE-III lights and more. The simplicity award goes to BNFP.

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