Pwdre Ser - Space Blobs

As he whose quicker eye both trace
A false star shot to a mark't place
Do's run apace
And, thinking it to catch,
A jelly up do snatch.
- Sir I. Suckling,
Poems Farewell to Love - 1541.

According to old legends and poetry, luminous bodies that fall from the sky can leave behind a fetid jelly lying upon the ground. These 'jellies' have come to be known by the Welsh term pwdre ser, which is to say 'rot of the stars' (Hughes 1910). Reports of 'blobs', which were sometimes attributed to extraterrestrial sources, continued to occur throughout the twentieth century. Newspaper articles referred to them as 'blobs', and did not always offer rational explanations.

Star Slough

There are many local words for pwdre ser. A review of these helps to place the term pwdre ser into a larger context. It seems that the starry appellations came first, and that the presumed link to meteors came much afterwards.

In 1678 John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee wrote in their translation and adaptation of Oedipus, Act II, that:

The sun and moon, run down like waxen globes;
The shooting stars end all in purple jellies.

John Dryden, in 1679, mentioned this again, in The Spanish Friar:

When I had taken up what I supposed a fallen star
I found I had been cozened with a jelly.

William Somervile said, in his 1740 poem In Rural Games, Canto III, that:

And like that falling Meteor, there she lyes
A jelly cold on earth.

Even Sir Walter Scott in the Talisman, 1825, wrote that:

"Seek a fallen star," said the hermit,
"and thou shalt only light on some foul jelly,-

In England the name for jelly-like organisms found in the pastures has long been ‘star slough’. Sometimes the same substance was called ‘star shot’ or ‘star shoot’. The word ‘slough’ originally meant waste or sloughed-off stuff. Similarly ‘shot’ meant something discharged, thrown away or worn out. Similar phases and word associations occur in other European languages. In French crachat de la lune means ‘spit of the moon’. Similarly Sternschnuppen means ‘star snuff’ in German. The Scandinavian word skyfallsalgen means ‘sky fallen algae’. These terms referred primarily to Nostoc globules. Though, doubtless similar jelly like things would likewise be given the same appellations (Whitten & Potts 2000, White & Nieves-Rivera 2010).

Nostoc is a genus of cyanobacterium, a photosynthetic bacterium. Colonies of these bacteria can excrete a gelatinous matrix. This gelatinous mass can grow up to the size of a walnut. Often these masses are globular, purple or purple-green and translucent. Very seldom they are pale grey or light olive green. The vast majority of Nostoc species are exclusively aquatic in their habitat. Nostoc globules sometimes grow in transient puddles, and thereby are exposed after the water drains away. A few species, such as Nostoc commune, can actually grow in open air – if the humidity is very high. They even have the ability to dehydrate, and then re-hydrate. Hence, they may appear and seemingly disappear. Globules of Nostoc commune can sometimes be found in open pastures, after persistent bouts of rainy weather (Whitton & Potts 2000). It is probably one cause of pwdre ser. But that stuff is commonly said to be very pale - unlike most nostocs (Hughes 1910).

Watermelon Snow

An odd phenomenon has been observed for centuries. It is the appearance of ‘red snow’. Old snow, most often snow that is slowly melting, can have what appears to be ‘blood stains’. This kind of snow is most common in the arctic, or in alpine meadows, during the early spring as the snow begins to melt. In these places it may form extensive pinkish spots that become more deeply red as the snow melts. The stains occur in ordinary winter snow also, though usually after mid-winter. I used to encounter small reddish spots on the snow during my youth. They were generally associated with rabbit tracks or spoor. At first I thought at first that they were blood stains from rabbits that had been injured somehow.

These spots were in fact caused by Chlamydomonas nivalis, a chlorophyte or ‘green alga’. Of course, this algal species is not green. But that is mostly because the cells are pigmented with the carotenoid astaxanthin and other sunscreen compounds. The pigments help to protect the cell from ultraviolet light. Ultraviolet is stronger in terrestrial environs than under-water. Terrestrial algae are often more purplish, reddish or yellowish than are aquatic algae (Duval & Thomas 2000). The pinkness of the snow has given the alga the common English name: ‘watermelon snow’. Sometimes this microbe is simply known as ‘snow alga’. In French it is commonly called algue de neige (snow alga) or trainée rougeâtre (red track). Often the red stains show up best in ski trails, in footprints or near thin spots in the snow.

How does the Chlamydomonas nivalis alga get onto the snow? It turns out, that they mostly migrate upward from the underlying soil. But spores can also be carried or blown in from elsewhere. These colonies of cells feed on slight impurities in the snow. They are commonest near birds’ winter-roosts, along animal trails, or near footpaths. Some occur under the drippings of branches and other over-hanging vegetation. So it seems that the alga is most common on snow that contains trace nutrients. Being chlorophytes, these algae photosynthesise, and they capture carbon dioxide from the air. The cells reproduce when the temperature is just slightly above freezing. In really cold weather the cells become dormant.

Angel Hair - Cobweb Rains

The English naturalist Gilbert White, described a 'fall' of cobwebs on September 21, 1741. He remarked that the tangled webs formed "perfect flakes or rags" and were "twinkling like stars" as they fell in the sunlight (White 1789). Cobwebs from the sky?

Angel hair is said to be an ephemeral silky substance that falls from the sky. Others have observed that angel hair issues from trees, not from the sky. Angel hair 'rains' occur mostly during the autumn. Angel hair has been attributed to 'psychic' or supernatural causes. It has even been considered a type of 'ectoplasm', an allenged manifestation of the spirit world!

For a time, after 1948, angel hair became associated with UFOs. Only in about half of these reports was a UFO reported on the same day as the angel hair rain. In the remaining reports, UFOs were implicated without any real justification. The first mention of angel hair and UFOs together occurred in Ontario on September 26, 1948. Strangely, this first witness suspected that the material was spider web. He also suspected that the 'flying saucers' were actually glittering globs of spider web carried aloft by the wind (Corliss, 1983).

As odd as it may seem, many species of spiders disperse by ballooning. These spiders use single filaments of thin web as parachutes. The web-lines can be several metres long, the spiders are tiny, hence the slightest breeze can lift the spiders aloft. In temperate climes this ballooning usually occurs during the autumn. Normally launches involve only a few spiders at a time. On rare occasions large numbers of spiders, often siblings from related egg clutches, balloon en masse from trees. Strong updrafts can cause these spiders to be carried away in unison. If this happens the webs can become entangled in the air. The effect can be quite dramatic (Corliss 1983).

This author has witnessed the formation of 'angel hair'. One autumn day in 1999 while hiking along the Scarborough Bluffs, in Ontario, I observed the formation of angel hair. Along the bluff margin there are many hawthorns, Russian olives, and other shrubs. From one group of shrubs, facing into the sun, I noticed hundreds of silky strands glistening in the sunlight. Each thread was nearly horizontal, even though the breeze was slight. A few strands had strung themselves out in the grass. Each strand was definitely issuing from the shrub's crown. I could only find one tiny spiderling, by tracing back a thread. The spider was tiny, pale, and had an oblong abdomen. The rest of the web-fasts were lost, invisible, in the shadow of the hawthorn. Nevertheless, since I found a spider, I presumed that the other hundreds of glistening strands were also ballooning spiders' webs.

References

Corliss, William R. 1983. Hand Book of Unusual Natural Phenomena. Anchor Press. Garden City New York. 248-250, 253-259

Darwin, C. 1860. The Voyage of the Beagle. Natural History Library Edition: 1962. Doubleday & Company, Inc.U.S.A. 160.

Duval, B., Shetty, K. and W.H. Thomas. 2000. Phenolic Compounds and Antioxidant Properties in the Snow Alga Chlamydomonas nivalis After Exposure to UV Light. Journal of Aplied Phycology 11: 559-566.

Hughes, T. McKenny. 1910. Pwdre ser. Nature. Vol. 83, June 23: 492-494.

Nieves-Rivera, Ángel M. 2003. The Fellowship of the Rings - UFO rings versus fairy rings. Skeptical Inquirer. 27, 6: 50-54.

Nieves-Rivera, Ángel M. 2004. Ethnomycological Notes: I. Lightning Bolts and Fungus Lore. Moeszia - Erdélyi Gombász, mikológiai folyóirat. 2: 84-89.

Nieves-Rivera, Á. M. and D. A. White. 2005. Ethnomycological notes. II. Meteorites and fungus lore. Mycologist 20, 1: 22-25.

Scagel, R.F. , Bandoni, R.J. , Maze, J.R. , Rouse, G.E. , Schonfield, W.B. and Stein, J.R. 1982. Nonvascular Plants - an evolutionary survey. Wadsworth Publishing Co. Belmont. 90-123.

White, David Andrew and Nieves-Rivera, Angel M. 2010. Star Slough and Pwdre Ser. Meteorite. 16(1): 40-42.

White, Gilbert. 1977 (1789). The Natural History of Shelborne. Penguin Books. Harmondsworth. 175-177.

Whitton, Brian A. and Potts, Malcolm. 2000. The Ecology of Cyanobacteria. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Boston. 497.

Fairy Rings to Crop Circles

-- a little lession in folkore --

Round circles on the ground have mystified people for centuries. Perfect rings of disturbed grass have long been associated, in various traditions, with elves, fairies and sprites. In Breton folklore, such rings are the dancing places of devious elves called corrigans (Hills & Dondo 1927). A Chippeway myth maintained that such rings were stamped-out by dancing star-maidens. The star-maidens fly about in baskets of woven osier (Spence 1994).

Fairy rings are places in fields, meadows or lawns where the growth of vegetation is disturbed in a ring-like pattern. In 1686 the English naturalist Dr. Robert Plott proposed the hypothesis that fairy rings were due to the "circular explosion of lightning". Thus it was that mysterious round circles on the ground were first explained in supernatural terms, and then later by the natural, but still mysterious, power of lightning (Reynolds 1990, Nieves-Rivera 2004). In the 1950s and '60s fairy rings became associated with UFOs. People would sometimes report that they had found circular impressions on the ground after a UFO was sighted in the area (Klass 1974, Peebles 1995).

Nowadays, we know that fairy rings are caused by soil fungi. In certain seasons the fruiting bodies of these fungi, the mushrooms, are visible on the edges of the fairy rings. Marasmium oreades , and other fungi of the Marasmium genus, are the most common cause of fairy rings. When the fungi are less active the rings may be practically invisible. This is why fairy rings may 'appear' as if overnight. Fairy rings can vary in diameter from a few centimetres to tens of metres. The roundness of these marks is due to the fact that the soil fungi grow outward from a centre of origin over a number of years.

An analysis of early examples of "flying saucer nests" has indicated that most non-hoax circles were simply mushroom rings. Other weird things are blamed on UFOs. Several of the more scientific UFOlogists have noticed other organisms contributing to UFO lore. Slime moulds have been reported as being ‘some weird stuff’ deposited by UFOs. Most early flying saucer nests had natural explanations. However, there were soon to be exceptions to this rule. During the 1970s a number of swirled impressions in started appearing in Australian marshes, UFOs were reported in association with these circles. These swirled impressions were not fairy rings. Since pranksters had long caught on to the idea of flying saucer nests, it is possible that some of these original crop circles were hoaxes, although we may never know for sure. In a few years similar impressions appeared in British cereal fields. By the 1980s crop circles were appearing all over Britain, Continental Europe, the Americas and even in Japan (Nickell 1995).

Dowsing - Radiesthesia

Perhaps you have heard about such things as: geomancy, ley lines, telluric energy grids, healthy and unhealthy geopathic zones, geodetic currents and earth dragons. Perhaps you have seen someone dangling a pendulum as they walk through a garden. Tradition holds that oak trees give a 'positive' pendulum response, and holly a 'negative' response. Have you wondered why people believe in these alleged telluric forces? Where do they find justification for declaring one plant 'positive', and another 'negative'? Many of these insights, it is claimed, were determined by dowsers - people who practice dowsing.

Dowsing, also called radiesthesia, is the art of detecting hidden items, or hidden information, by paranormal means. Traditionally water was the substance dowsers sought. Although, other materials were also dowsed for, such as minerals and oil. Some dowsers even claim they can tell authentic crop circles from hoaxes. Some professional dowsers chart out the 'geodetic currents' around people's homes. Others have offered their services to the police. Many have claimed success in solving crimes.

Dowsing is very ancient form of divination that goes back at least to Roman times. Similar forms of divination have long been part of the Chinese art of feng shui. Feng shui is the arrangement of items in living space so as to maximise health, luck and prosperity. Feng shui is more extensive in scope than Western dowsing tradition. (Practical advice and aesthetic considerations also have a role in feng shui.) Nevertheless, many aspects of the two traditions do overlap.

Traditionally dowsers use devices such as a y-shaped rod, angle rod, wand or pendulum. These devices are precarious balances that move at the slightest twitch of the human hand. The old belief that some force actually 'pulls' on the dowsing devices is now considered passé. It is claimed that the mind influences the muscles of the hand that moves the rod or pendulum. A dowsing device is merely a tool to amplify the mind's intuition about the target material. The dowsing effect, it is claimed, is a manifestation of psychic (psi) ability (Webster 2001).

Scepticism

Dowsing apologists commonly write of success stories of such and such a person whom found water, oil or a lost person. A few studies seem to suggest that dowsers score better than chance guessing (Webster 2001). Sceptics maintain that the dowsing response is due involuntary muscle movements invoked by un-conscious mental processes, ie. the ideomotor effect. Dowser's respond to what they believe, not to what they actually know. In other words, the dowsers are responding to subconscious cues. However, sceptics maintain, these cues do not lead to correct insights any more than would educated guesses. Perhaps an experienced dowser can learn were suitable well sites are likely to be by visible non-paranormal clues. This recognition might be sub-conscious, hence it is not so much a fraud as self-deception (Randi 1998, Webster 2001).

The question remains, can dowsing be demonstrated in controlled experiments? Unfortunately, controlled tests of dowsing have not been very reassuring. In 1986 a test by researchers at the University of Munich conducted a controlled study of over 843 trials. In this study, dowsers were tested on their ability to locate hidden water pipes. Even though the researchers were predisposed toward dowsing, the results were very weak. They were so weak that if the dowsing effect existed, it was so faint as to be practically useless. Other, more sceptical reviewers, analysed the same data and concluded than the dowsers fared no better that chance (Enright 1999). Likewise, most published controlled studies have had negative, or at best weak, results. The magician James Randi has tested many dowsers. He has yet to meet a dowser who could actually find hidden items at a rate greater than chance (Randi 1998).

There were no particular reasons why dowsing should not have passed these controlled tests, if the effect really exists. Therefore, the onus is currently on dowsers to supply convincing evidence that the dowsing ability is not an illusion.

End Note:

Perhaps it hardly needs saying, that water occurs most everywhere underground. In fact roughly ninety percent of freshwater is hidden underground. That is, it is within the water table. Pretty much the only places lacking well-water are locales where the bedrock projects above the water table level. Indeed there is also water inside the pores and crevasses of most of this bedrock. But this rock-water is not easy to access well-wise. In other words, groundwater is more-or-less everywhere underfoot. For the most part water-witchers do not really ‘find’ anything unexpected.

References

Enright, J.T. 1999. Testing Dowsing - the failure of the Munich experiments. Skeptical Inquirer. 23, 1: 39-46.

Randi, James. 1998. The Matter of Dowsing ... Skeptical Inquirer. 6, 4: 6-7.

Webster, Richard. 2001. The Art of Dowsing. Castle Books. Edison NJ. xi-198.

Poisonous Toadstools

Shrooms

Some fungi are hallucinogenic, or are otherwise psychoactive. Probably this is simply due to the fact that the neurotoxins in these fungi are ‘aimed’ at insect or nematode nervous systems, and not ‘aimed’ at mammalian nerves. Our nervous systems are a little bit different from these animals. The end result is that some myco-neurotoxins are psychedelics rather than simple poisons, when ingested by mammals. A further problem with some fungi is that they can contain other kinds of toxins as well. Certain compounds hinder protein synthesis. Sometimes these are called hepatotoxins, because the liver can be injured by these compounds. These toxins can take more than two days to damage a mammal’s vital functions (Michelot & Melendez-Howell 2003). Probably these toxins function to kill small fungivores before they cause much damage to the fungus. Some hallucinogenic fungi contain these deadly poisons along with the less deadly neurotoxins.

Fly Agaric

Fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) is an hallucinogenic toadstool with a long history. The fungus grows mostly in boreal and alpine coniferous forests. Hence, it is mostly a northern species. In Eurasia the toadstool tends to be bright red, and very hallucinogenic. In the Americas the fly agaric tends to be orange or yellow, and less hallucinogenic. The fly agaric is therefore a very variable species. It is known that many Uralic, Altaic and Siberian peoples used fly agaric for ritual purposes. For example, the Chukchee used the fly agaric to converse with spirits (Siimets 2006). The use of the toadstool by Amerindian peoples varied widely. In the west, and in the Great Lakes area, some First Nations cultures used the toadstool as a narcotic (Navet 1988). The actual first known use of the fungus in religion and ritual is rather obscure. The fly agaric was probably not used by Western Europeans in historic times. Some claims of such use in ancient Europe have been subject to heavy scepticism (Dumont 1992).

Claims that the fly agaric was the soma of the ancient Aryans is less established than is often claimed. Soma is mentioned in Sanskrit literature (Rig-Veda). A similar drug was the haoma of the Persians. This haoma was the used by the early Zoroastrians. Haoma is widely believed to be the same thing as ‘soma’. But it is not perfectly clear if either drug was fly agaric. Over the centuries different plants have been used in place of the original soma - whatever it was (Matossian 2007).

In the late 1950s, the banker turned scholar, R. Gordon Wasson presented the idea that soma was originally the fly agaric. Wasson is now considered the pioneer of ‘ethnomycology’ - the study of the cultural uses of fungi (Wasson & Wasson 1957). It is possible that the soma and haoma were somehow derived from an ergot fungus. Some of the Claviceps fungi, that grow on cereal corns, are capable of causing hallucinations (Matossian 2007).

In Japan the fly agarics is eaten, in a few regions. The fly agaric is soaked in brine for days, the water is then thrown-out, and the toadstool is cooked (Whelan 1994). However, Amanita muscaria can be deadly in high doses. Amanitas contain: muscazon, ibotenic acid, muscimol and bufotenine. Each compound exists on a scale between psychoactive and poisonous. The concentrations of the safe and dangerous ingredients vary widely with genetic variations, growing conditions, altitude and other factors. The main danger is misidentifying one amanita species for another. Fly agaric has close taxonomic relatives which are deadly look-alikes (Young et al 1977, Michelot & Melendez-Howell 2003).

Psilocybe Toadstools

The famous magic mushrooms of the Aztecs are Psilocybe species, not amanitas. These toadstools commonly grow on dung, although there are many saprobic habitats specific to each species. Psilocybe toadstools can contain psilocybin, a potent hallucinogen. It is often not realised that there are many psilocybe species. As a whole the magic mushrooms are probably more common than the amanitas. However, because they are small and non-descript, the psilocybe species are not so easily identified. They are similar in appearance to the slender types of Mycena or Pholiota toadstools which occur on lawns. In other words, one should beware of small toadstools which grow on dung.

Magic mushrooms were officially identified in an 1939 article by a Harvard botanist Richard Evens Schultes. This publication tentatively identified the teonanacatl, the magic mushroom, of the Aztecs. Schultes found that the identification of the toadstool was preserved in Mexican folk traditions. Various psilocybes are still used by diverse native peoples throughout Mexico. Probably teonanacatl was a psilocybe as well (Davis 1996).

Recent research has suggested that psilocybin may be among the least toxic of known psychomimetics. Nevertheless, possession of magic mushrooms is illegal in many places. Furthermore, psilocybes do not look very different from some of the other ‘little brown mushrooms’ (LBMs). One could easily mistake a poisonous LBM species for a magic shroom (Young et al 1977). So some knowledge of toadstool identification is essential - if one dares to experiment with shrooms.

Summary

Storm Lights

Since ancient times there have been reports of aurora-like ‘storm lights’ or ‘weather lights’. These pulses of light that were said to presage the coming of thunderstorms. They were certainly weird and ‘Fortean’. The glows were once dismissed as mere ‘heat lightning’, i.e. lightning flashes reflected off clouds. Cloud-to-sky ‘rocket lightning’ was also confused with these storm lights. Or, they were thought of as some sort of auroral glows. No doubt some were in fact aurorae.

On the evening of February 4, 1893, J. Ewen Davidson was watching a distant thunderstorm in Queensland Australia. Twenty to twenty-five times he saw "a patch of rosy light" mount upward from the stormclouds and vanish. In addition to these patches he also saw a few pale streamers beam upward from the clouds (Davidson 1893).

In the nineteenth century the polar aurorae were thought to be some kind of atmospheric phenomenon. So naturally the assumption was made that auroral glows over thunderclouds were proof of this conjecture. Eventually aurorae were found to originate from solar flares. Hence storm lights were dismissed as aurorae by chance in line-of-sight with distant thunderstorms. In fact, for most of the twentieth century meteorologists, for the most part, simply ignored storm light anecdotes.

In 1990 John R. Winckler, of the University of Minnesota, recorded bizarre aurora-like flashes above a distant thunderstorm using a video camera. It was presumed that they must be related to thunderstorm generated electric fields. By 1992 meteorologists had fully documented the existence of these 'high-altitude flashes'. These glows may extend sky-ward tens of kilometres. Near the storm cloud summit these glows are blue and beam-like, they are now called ‘jets’. Jets are the slowest and most visible manifestation of these discharges. They may take up to a quarter second to mount up from the cloud into the sky. In the ionosphere high-altitude flashes are pink-orange and globular, they are now called ‘sprites’. Sprites are extremely brief, rather dim and seldom visible to the human eye. By 1996 the basic physical mechanism of these electrical discharges had been worked out (Fishman et al 1994).

References

Davidson, J. Ewen. 1893. Thunderstorm and auroral phenomena. Nature. 47, April 20: 582.

Fishman, G.L., Bhat, P.N., Mallozzi, R., Horack, J.M., Koshut, T., Kouveliotou, C., Pendleton, G.N., Meegan, C.A., Wilson, R.B., Paciesas, W.S., Goodman, S.J. and Christian, H.J. 1994. Discovery of intense gamma-ray flashes of atmospheric origin. Science. 264, 27 May: 1313-1316.

White, D. Andrew. 1997. High-altitude flashes, an anecdote from 1893. Journal of Meteorology, U.K.. 22, 221: 257-258.

Will-O' -The-Wisp

There was a strange class of luminous apparitions that seems to have been more common in the past century than now. Consider the following anecdote:

On the night of October 5, 1872, Howard Fox was walking with a friend near Ruan Major in England. A light appeared from the centre of a "swampy field", this small light "bounded upward" into the air. After climbing to thirty feet, or so, above the ground it disappeared. Four or five times a similar sequence of bounding lights were observed (Fox 1873).

Electric Meteors

There is a rarely reported form of lightning that looks like a shooting star or fiery dart. These fireballs are called ‘electric meteors’. Electric meteors travel far too fast to be discrete balls of air or plasma. Being close to air in density a plasma ball should lose its momentum to the ambient air almost immediately. Such a ball thrust through the air would certainly be torn apart by air resistance. This would not be an issue if the electric meteor was an electric discharge front. Such discharge fronts, like lightning leaders, would not actually consist of the same hot air from moment to moment.

• On the night of March 21-22, 1877, M. Ed. Blanc saw several fire balls dart out of a cloud near Vence France. These yellow and reddish balls of fire dashed out of the thundercloud in all directions at a little less than two degrees per second. After travelling six to eight degrees these balls turned white and "broke" silently with "effulgent" brightness. Every two or three minutes a new batch of three, or so, fire balls would issue from the cloud and explode. The thunderstorm was at least "eleven miles" away (Nature 1877).
• There have been reports of balls of fire transforming into lightning bolts, and vice versa. A British Doctor., J.W. Tripe, in 1874 witnessed several upward moving fire balls that accelerated from "cricket ball" velocity to into lightning, including the zig-zag channel (Nature 1887).

Electric meteors are a fairly well documented phenomenon. In Sarpy County Nebraska, on August 21, 1996, D. Morss and P. McCrone video taped a fire ball that popped out of the top of a thundercloud. The ball was only 1/10th of a second in view, but the high-speed video managed to capture six frames of the rapid fire ball. The fire ball's estimated speed was "1,800 miles per second". Some investigators doubted this velocity estimate. On May 25, 1997, near Loco Oklahoma, L. Lamphere video taped an "object" flying into a tornado storm cloud and out the other side. It "dipped and bobbled" as it travelled under a ceiling of cloud. Its estimated speed was in the range of 4 to 10 kilometres per second - much slower than a normal lightning leader. In both cases the "objects" were only noticeable on the video replay (Sourcebook Project 1997).

Since these fiery darts move under cloudy ceilings it is doubtful that they were ordinary meteors. However, the fire balls' velocities were within the known parameters of lightning leaders. Ordinary lightning leaders are actually short darts, which are manifest as such when viewed in freeze frame photography. It is mostly cloud-to-ground discharges that are close to light speed. Lower amperage cloud-to-cloud leaders are much slower, ‘merely’ a few hundred kilometres per second. Probably the racing fire balls were in fact lightning leaders on the slower end of the velocity scale (White 1994b).

References

Abrahamson, John and Dinniss, James. 2000. Ball lightning caused by oxidation of nanoparticle networks from normal lightning strikes on soil. Nature. 403. 3 February: 519-521.

Barry, James Dale. 1980. Ball lightning and bead lightning: extreme forms of atmospheric electricity. Plenum Press. New York.

Nature, Editors. 1877. Ball lightning. Nature. 15, April 19: 539.

Nature, Editors. 1887. Notes: Royal Meteorological Society. Nature. 36, June 30: 214-215.

Sourcebook Project. 1997. Ball of light clocked at 1,800 miles / second! Science Frontiers. 113, September-October. 3.

White, D. Andrew. 1994a. Ball lightning anecdotes. Journal of Meteorology, U.K. 19, 187: 96.

White, D. Andrew. 1994b. Ball lightning and rocket lightning. Journal of Meteorology, U.K. 19, 185: 15-16.

Forest Rings

Since the early days of aerial photography there have been noticed large rings in forested areas. In the last few decades an extraordinary number of such rings have been noted in the boreal forests of Northern Ontario. The rings are very close to round, with trees stunted in a ring around a central section with a lesser degree of stunting. These rings are up to 500 metres wide, though a few exceed a kilometre in width. The rings are not very noticeable from the ground level. Two geologists, Stewart M. Hamilton and Keito H. Hattori, have examined several of these rings in detail. It turns out that the the rings have geochemical causes.

Chemically the outer margin of a forest ring tends to be more oxidising - with a weak negative electric potential. Generally, the inner parts of the ring is reducing - with a slightly positive electric potential. A ring tends to have lower amounts of carbonates, on its inside, and its grade is often depressed around the rim. Just outside the ring these carbonates may have a higher concentration than normal. The disturbances of grade, soil chemistry and pH, reflect in the vigour of the overlying vegetation. The rings generally seem to be mostly centred on methane rich stata, or till rich in dissolved sulphides. These layers help to maintain an overburden of reduced iron or sulphur. The oxidation of this iron, or sulphur, produces an acidic interface with the surrounding soil. A ring of low pH is created where the redox gradient is strongest. It seems that the combined effect is the creation of a spontaneous potential (SP) voltage gradient. A forest ring is essentially a large natural voltaic cell.

Ontario’s boreal forests seem have more forest rings than most other boreal forests. The soils of the Canadian Shield are fairly ‘young’, as the glaciers left the areas only a ‘few’ thousand years ago. Furthermore, the soil is fairly shallow in the areas where rings occur. This means that SP gradients would be more noticeable aboveground. All these factors conspire to allow SP gradients to persist for a few millennia. Probably, the natural ‘batteries’ shall eventually go ‘flat’.

Honey-Mushroom Rings

Another kind of forest ring has been identified. Namely, giant colonies of Armillaria fungus can occur in boreal forests. These ‘honey mushrooms’ are both parasitic and saprobic on the wood of coniferous trees. Like many fungi, reproduction by mycelial cloning is the most common form of reproduction. Their thick mycelia can spread from tree to tree. The interconnected strands of a genetic-individual can add up to many tonnes of tissue. A genetic-individual of this fungus can certainly weigh far more than, say, a blue whale or a redwood tree. Maybe technically these mycelium mats are not ‘individuals’, as the mycelial connections eventually break into separate pieces. Nevertheless, honey mushrooms can form vast ‘fairy-rings’ spread out over many hectares. These rings may be visible from the air, as circles of dead and moribund trees. However, these rings are not usually neat and round. They are often irregular, or they form partial arcs.

References

Hamilton, Stewart and Harrori, Keiko. 2008. Spontaneous and redox responses over a forest ring. GEOPHYSICS. 73 (3): B67-75.

Smith , M., Bruhn, J. and Anderson, J. 1992. The fungus Armillaria bulbosa is among the largest and oldest living organisms. Nature 356:428-431