"MadCow" wrote in message
...
In message , BibsBro
writes
"Edward Erbeck" wrote in message
...
The Image is of something burning. You can see the Smoke drifting to
the left of it.
Yes. I did notice that.
Must be a "staged" photo to represent what they look like.
They don't look like that, they're very faint. The whole point is that
you see one out of the corner of your eye (where your retina is most
sensitive to faint lights) then you look towards it and nothing's there.
The cause is methane bubbling out of bogs and marshes, somehow catching
fire and burning with a low flickering blue flame.
Bioluminescence is familiar to country people as rotting wood that glows
in the dark, but it's nothing like will'o'th'wisp.
The glow is usually fairly bright and always perfectly steady, it doesn't
hide from you and you get it on dry ground not just in bogs. You can take
the rotten log home and show it to your parents, then keep it for later.
Mine lasted for weeks, or until the parents threw them away.
Before miners' safety lamps were invented, they used to deliberately
infect dead branches with bioluminescent rot and use them as lamps
underground.
--
Sue ]
Thanks, that was quite interesting.