We may finally know what causes will-o’-the-wisps

Bubbles uniting in water can spontaneously generate electric sparks, powerful enough to light metatan, which can explain the mysterious outbreaks of light known as Will-O'-The-Wisps.

In swamps, swamps and swamps, people sometimes see mysterious blue flashes of light above water, which were usually associated with ghosts or perfumes. A more likely explanation of these will-o-o-pizps or ignis fatuus is that flashes occur due to gas burning, such as metatan and phosphin, produced by decomposition of organic matter in muddy water below. But it is unclear what to make the gases to light, with the proposed causes, such as static electricity or lightning, which remained by lack of order.

Now, Richard zero At Stanford University in California and his colleagues, spontaneous electric sparks were observed between the bubbles of methane and air in the water in the laboratory, which they call microlyte. They say that such events can easily have enough energy to light methane gas.

“We continue to open things about the water that, as soon as you understand them, they are obvious, but before that they seem completely strange,” says Zare. “No one thinks about the water related to fire. They think that water produces fire. They do not tell you water, I can get a spark and something in the fire. This is new. “

Dawns and his colleagues have already seen drops of water, the size of the grain of salt, the creation of the charge and spontaneously creating sparks, so they thought that a similar effect could occur between methane bubbles in the water. They used a nozzle to send methane micropouvers mixed with air through water, and observed where the bubbles would collide using a high -speed chamber, as well as a photon counter and a spectrometer.

When the bubbles rose through the water, they changed their shape and accumulated the charge. When two bubbles met, the difference between them will cause a spark, creating a flash that Zare and his team were recorded both with a camera and a photon counter.

They also measured the frequencies in the flash and found that the signatures of specific compounds that were chemically excited corresponded. This suggests that the sparks will be powerful enough to cause a gas ignition of such methane.

“[The Italian physicist Alessandro] The Volta first suggested that it was a lightning that causes these Ignis Fatuus, and in a sense he was right, but not for the reasons that he thought, says Zare. – This is not a lightning in the air emanating from the sky; This is really from drops. “

“It clearly looks very interesting,” says Detlef Lose At the University of Twent in the Netherlands. Despite the fact that this is not the final interpretation of what causes the will-o-piss, this is a plausible opportunity, says to Loza, and the results will probably cause further research.