Marfa Lights Explained

billsoxs writes "The Marfa lights are ghostly lights that have been observed for years around Marfa TX (near Big Bend). They have been the subject of curiosity , a source of tourism and scientifically studied a number of times. Now a group of physics students from the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) have use small lasers and traffic sensors to show that these lights are most likely headlights from cars on a distant highway. The publication is in the Society of Physics Students website. The PDF of the article is here. (Unfortunately the related video is no longer available on the web but more stuff is here.)"

Re:Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, it seems like most people are completely uninterested in scientific explainations for anything :(

The Science Channel, Discovery and SciFi are RIFE with UFO and Psychic garbage. Why? Because that's what people want. They want to believe that not everything can be explained and actually get rather hostle at times when they are!

As it is, we are pretty low in supply of "scientists" and time to devote to relatively unimportant things like studying swamp light. :( Maybe if science were more of a topic in school and we had more scientists and well if people in general were so damn superstitious! (That's why ID is really now being taught in schools)

Re:Video Link

[hazman]

Now if they could just figure out what all of those eerie sounds are.

Google maps shows an old roadbed

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who grumble that there was no highway south back in the day, there is ample evidence of at least one other roadbed running the same stretch southward crossing back and forth over Highway 67 in a less direct path. The roadbed seen in the satellite imagery is not on the current map as a road, but it's clear that's what it was.

Its down to your nation's history

[CdBee]

I'm not going to comment on the religious nature of many early immigrants to the Americas - many outstanding centres of science have been based in places which to a European (me) appear to be very religiously orientated

My point is that the spreading of population across America's vast spaces took place at a time when European nations had been fully farmed and occupied for over a thousand years.
as a result you've always had small rural populations, which are classic sources of mythology and folklore, and this has led to a cultural appreciation of unscientific beliefs which has survived the astonishing prowess of American science due to its deeply-ingrained nature

I suppose in some ways it makes your people more open to innovative (read, outlandish) scientific theories, which has led both to some of the silly beliefs present in present-day US, and some of the more amazing genuine discoveries.
We Europeans see Americans as slightly naive, but it would be kinder to describe your culture as more willing to investigate what many of us would just ignore.