Talk:Brown Mountain Lights
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Could not be light refractions due to the existance of the lights before the common use of electricity. An episode of unsolved mysteries that aired a segment on the Brown Mtn lights debunked the candlewatt reflection experiment in 1977.
There is also an excellent source to ellaborate on this article:
http://www.ibiblio.org/ghosts/bmtn_p2.html
This article appears biased towards LEMUR research. The referenced Electric Spacecraft is not a respected journal (http://www.electricspacecraft.com/journal.htm) but closer to a hobbyist publication. The explaination of intersecting "discharges" spinning in the visible spectrum makes no sense at all. Plasma discharges are a viable explaination -- IEEE Spectrum has an article describing lights caused by electrical discharges creating plasma before earthquakes. However, this article's description is incomplete and confusing.
- I have referenced LEMUR's material as claims rather than fact. LuckyLouie 00:47, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
- I agree. I've taken first steps to correct this, but more work is needed. Is "Electric Space Craft" even peer-reviewed? LEMUR does ghost hunting and is a commercial group. A couple years ago they were selling the video they claimed to have taken of the lights. None of these things means they're not doing good science, but I think it suggests they have a high burden to show that they are doing good science. Allen 17:57, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
There is also a burden of finding a solid source for finding information concerning BML. I think there too many alternate sources that may be less than reputable. I originally posted the first entry in discussion being my first foray into the world of Wikki. It pleased me to see a timely revision.
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- I suggest looking into the entry for Joshua P. Warren. (a) He's a self-proclaimed "scientist. (b) There is much of what appears to be pseudoscience being claimed as fact. LuckyLouie 08:19, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] 1913?
From an article at [[1]]
"Modern investigations started at the request of some US Congressmen to the U.S. Geologic Survey. Two investigations were made, the first in 1913 and the second in 1922."
I cross-checked this with various other articles, finding it to be correct. If a first investigation into the cause of the lights was made in the year 1913, surely they must have been observed for some time before that year, countering the Wikipedia article's claim that they were first observed in 1913?
In fact, from various sources, the earliest accounts from Europeans were during the 1770s. Native American accounts date much further, for obvious reasons. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.132.201.131 (talk • contribs)
- Please clarify what these "various sources" are. The history of the Brown Mountain Lights is controversial, so it's crucial that we cite the sources of all claims that the lights were seen before the 1900s. --Allen 16:38, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] removed unsourced material
I just removed some unsourced material, including the following:
In later decades, reports of the Brown Mountain Lights continued. An experiment conducted in 1977 shone a 50,000 candela floodlight 22 miles (35 km) towards Brown Mountain. Experimenters saw a red, circular light floating above the horizon, and thus concluded that refraction of ordinary lights were likely to blame for the Brown Mountain Lights.
I removed this text reluctantly, because I once talked to someone involved with this research, and it sounds like it probably did happen, and is potentially important. Still, the closest to a reliable source I can find is this, and it just doesn't seem reliable enough. But I'm leaving it here on the talk page in case anyone has a more appropriate source. --Allen (talk) 23:30, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
