Marfa Lights – Page 5 – Modern Pterosaur

January 6, 2011January 6, 2011

Marfa Light, How Bright!

The intelligence exhibited by Marfa Lights is what I mean by “how bright,” and this seems to me to be a good time for examples. We’ll examine some sightings of Marfa Lights in light of the possibility that they are guided by intelligence, in particular that they are from the bioluminescence of flying predators that are highly intelligent, according to Whitcomb.

We begin with a report by James Bunnell, a highly-respected scientist who has devoted years of work and thought to these mystery lights of Marfa, Texas. I quote from his book Hunting Marfa Lights (published in 2009), pages 91-92:

May 8, 2003 . . . Temperature was around 60 degrees F. . . . at 10:22 PM the ML returned; I will call this ML (D). ML (D) began moving west . . . the final location was west of the railroad tracks . . . the distance [it flew] measured eleven miles . . . This ML event is also unique because of the explosive-like expansion that resulted in the light going out and then resuming at a much lower altitude.

Note that Bunnell assumes that the “resuming” flying light was the same thing that had been flying at a much higher altitude just a little earlier. It’s an easy assumption to make, for the flight direction may have been identical and the timing for that flying object to have turned off its glow and then soon afterwards to have turned back on its glow, while still flying, seems perfectly relevant. But I propose something else.

Note that other observations of CE-III mystery lights (a designation Bunnell gives to certain lights around Marfa: lights that travel and exhibit combustion-like attributes) sometimes involve light “splitting.” Whitcomb’s Marfa Light hypothesis includes the proposition that this is a sort of optical illusion for distant human observers: There were two objects, one glowing but not the other; the non-glowing one turns on its bioluminescence just before the two flying creatures separate.

Now take Whitcomb’s idea one step further. ML (D), observed by Bunnell on May 8, 2003, and photographed by more than one camera, could have involved two flying predators, with only one of them glowing at a time. How I arrived at this possibility requires additional explanation.

The distance from start point to end point was, according to Bunnell’s triangulation calculations, eleven miles, and the time of travel was eighteen minutes. That makes the average speed about 37 mph, assuming a straight flight, which it seems to have been. That speed is critical to the reasoning that follows.

Some birds can fly 37 miles per hour, but most do not fly that fast, at least not for long. Barn owls are not known for flying straight for many miles, even if one of them could keep up a pace of 37 mph. But the ropen of Papua New Guinea is said to fly “faster than birds but slower than airplanes.”

Now, assuming Marfa Lights are flying creatures somewhat similar to ropens, what would cause a large bioluminescent flying creature to fly eleven miles straight at 37 miles per hour? Only one possibility comes to my mind: A frightened intruding male is being chased by a dominant male who is protecting his females.

Now remember Bunnell’s observation that the second light-appearance flew at a “much lower altitude.” How does that correlate with my ropen-chasing-ropen hypothesis? (Actually I don’t know if these flying creatures are closely related to the ropen or not, but I believe they are flying predators.) We now look at this in stages.

First, if one flying animal is chasing off another smaller one of the same species, and the locomotion is flight, which animal would be willing to take more chances? Of course: the one in danger, the smaller one being chased. That smaller one (even if the size difference is minimal) could very well fly just above the ground. The dominant male need not take any chances flying into something like a tree at night; he would have flown higher. This is somewhat similar to some plane dogfights in which, in desperation, the fighter plane pilot being tailed dives down near the ground to try to throw off his pursuer (I have some knowledge of this).

Second, when would a high-speed, long-distance chase be more likely to take place for flying predators? Not in the dead of winter, when everyone is too stressed and too low on energy (with fewer opportunities for catching food). May 8th, at 10:22 PM, when the temperature is 60 degrees F., seems like a good time for this chase to take place. Both the pursuer and the pursued had a few weeks of opportunities to eat better than they had in the winter.

Third, when would be the most logical time for a pursued bioluminescent flyer to turn on his glow? This may be more speculative, but I’ll make a suggestion. I suspect there are two possibilities: The pursuer ran out of the a needed-secretion or he turned off his glow to surprise the one pursued. Whatever it was, I suspect the larger one dived down onto the smaller one that had been below him. That caused the pursued one to turn on its glow, for it was no longer possible to hide in the dark, not with that big male almost clawing on his backside.

I said that I would give “examples,” but I’ve run out of time, having given only one, so this sighting of May 8, 2003, with my interpretation, will have to do for now. This sighting seems to me to be much easier to explain with my hypothesis than with something involving earth lights or other non-living energies.

December 28, 2010January 30, 2013

Marfa Lights up in the Houston Chronicle

The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in the state of Texas, the ninth largest in the United States, according to Wikipedia. Large newspapers, the traditional backbone of major media, rarely publish ideas that contradict basic assumptions of the society in which they exist. It was no surprise when the Houston Chronicle’s December 19, 2010, print edition played to the audience with the article “What’s going on in Marfa?” published online on December 16. The subject was Marfa Lights. It played to the assumption that no “dinosaur” could live in Marfa, Texas.

The article was elicited by a press release by Jonathan Whitcomb, part of a national promotion for his new book, the second edition of Live Pterosaurs in America. The Houston Chronicle gave no details about that press release, giving no quotations from it. It mentioned two scientists, James Bunnell and Karl Stephan, both of whom seem to have dismissed the possibility of modern pterosaurs. Neither Bunnel nor Stephan is a biologist.

Whitcomb’s idea of bioluminescent flying predators, perhaps even living pterosaurs, as an explanation for some of the mystery lights of Marfa, was dismissed, but there’s more: His qualifications for making that suggestion were questioned, to put it mildly.

While Whitcomb has been effective in broadcasting his views, he acknowledges that he has no scientific training, has never been to Marfa and has not seen the creatures whose patterns and habits he attempts to describe. He did make a trip to Papua New Guinea to investigate flying predators there but saw none.

The writer of the Houston Chronicle article, Claudia Feldman, seems to have overlooked an important part of science: the theoretical scientist. Like a detective who questions eyewitnesses and pieces together ideas based on what eyewitnesses have said, the theoretical scientist does not necessarily need to be an eyewitness, especially when eyewitnesses are plentiful or especially trustworthy. One name that comes to mind is Albert Einstein. He had limited, if any, training in physics; he had never been to an area where there was a total solar eclipse; he never saw the physics experiments that caused him to work at his theories. But he trusted the data from the experiments of those scientists who worked hands-on with scientific equipment.

That is not to say that Whitcomb is an Einstein. I only suggest that the writer of that article in the Houston Chronicle misses an important point, and she could have dismissed Einstein as unqualified, if she had lived and had written newspaper articles in Europe about a century ago.

I suggest that Claudia Feldman, the staff writer for the Houston Chronicle, would have done better to have written about what Whitcomb has done, not what he has not done. But then an article too friendly to the possibility of modern pterosaurs might not have been accepted for publication by her superiors.

December 22, 2010April 25, 2011

Science and Marfa Lights

A number of scientists have tried to know and understand Marfa Lights: observing, testing photographing, and theorizing. Interesting ideas have emerged; none but one, however, seems to come close to adequately explaining the apparent intellegence associated with those flying lights, the mystery lights of Marfa, Texas: a modern pterosaur.

James Bunnell, a retired aerospace engineer, has side-stepped the apparent intellegence associated with some sightings. But he has photographed a number of the “ML” (mystery lights) and analyzed the results.

Edson Hendricks, a Californian who has visited Texas and is a Marfa Light investigator, has also side-stepped the apparent intellegence associated with some sightings. But he has analyzed some of the data.

Jonathan Whitcomb, another scientist from California, has concentrated on the apparent intelligence, analyzing information from those sightings that might relate to the ropen lights of Papua New Guinea. And the results of that analysis might appear more like science fiction than science: nocturnal bioluminescent flying predators that might be related to ropens, even if that means a living pterosaur interpretation. Nevertheless, when extinction dogma is set aside, there is nothing unscientific about the hypothesis that Marfa Lights are caused by the bioluminescence of flying predators.

Some critics have disparaged the work of Jonathan Whitcomb, assuming that because he supports the work of his YEC creationist associates he is too biased to be taken seriously. By the same reasoning, one could reject Calculus because of the Biblical studies of Sir Isaac Newton. Religious intolerance, like that of Whitcomb’s critics, cannot refute the testimonies of eyewitnesses. Let it be observed that those eyewitnesses are the ones giving evidence, through their testimonies of modern pterosaurs, and those witnesses come from various religious and non-religious backgrounds, refuting the assumption of the critics, the presumption that reports of modern pterosaurs are the result of inappropriate insertion of religion into scientific work. Science will continue to progress, in spite of those shallow-minded critics.

In addition: