The Min Min light is a light phenomenon that has often been reported in outback Australia. [1] [2]
The Min Min light is a light phenomenon that has often been reported in outback Australia. [1] [2]
Stories about the lights can be found in several Aboriginal Australian cultures predating the European colonisation of Australia, and have since become part of wider Australian folklore. [1] Some Indigenous Australians hold that the number of sightings has increased in conjunction with the ingression of Europeans into the outback. [1] While it has been claimed that the first recorded sighting dates to 1838, in the book Six Months in South Australia, [3] it is possible that the event described is a different phenomenon. [4]
The origin of the name Min Min is uncertain. It could be connected to an Australian Aboriginal language from the Cloncurry area, or it could be connected to the Min Min Hotel, located in a small settlement of the same name, where the light was observed by a stockman in 1918. [5] Neither connection has been substantiated. [6] Non-Indigenous folklore and tales of the Min Min lights tend to characterize them as a mysterious phenomenon and fit into understandings of the land which are characterised by the Australian Gothic; [7] Min Min lights are often portrayed as benign, yet frightening and unknowable to those who experience them. [8]
Reports of the phenomenon are widespread throughout Australia from as far south as Brewarrina in western New South Wales, to as far north as Boulia in northern Queensland. The majority of sightings are reported to have occurred in Channel Country. [1] Another district where Min Min lights are often reported is Yunta, South Australia, which is centred within a low-lying basin known for recording extreme heat.[ citation needed ] The Ngarluma people report Min Min lights in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, particularly in an area known as Pyramid Station.[ citation needed ]
Accounts of the light appearances vary, though they are most commonly described as being fuzzy, disc-shaped lights that appear to hover just above the horizon. [1] [2] They are often described as being white, though some accounts describe them as changing colour from white to red to green and back again. Some accounts describe them as being dim; others describe them as being bright enough to illuminate the ground under them and to cause nearby objects to throw clearly defined shadows. [1] [2] According to folklore, the lights sometimes follow or approach people and disappear when fired upon, sometimes very rapidly, only to reappear later on, [1] [2] and anyone who chases the lights and catches them will never return to tell the tale. [9] Some witnesses describe the light as appearing to approach them several times before retreating. Others report that the lights were able to keep pace with them when they were in a moving motor vehicle. [1] [2]
It is unknown whether the Min Min lights are a real phenomenon, and if so, what their source might be. Various hypotheses have been put forward to explain the lights, including:
Scientist Jack Pettigrew has hypothesized that the lights may be the result of insects swarming that have taken on bioluminescent characteristics after being contaminated by naturally occurring agents found in local fungi, [1] or of species of owl with their own naturally occurring source of bioluminescence. [10] To date, no one has captured or observed an animal with these characteristics. There is also no known bioluminescent source bright enough. [1]
A second hypothesis the author offers is that the lights are the result of known geophysical phenomena, such as piezoelectrics or marsh gas. [1] However, the lights are often reported in areas without geological conditions conducive to these phenomena. [1]
He also suggests that the Min Min lights could be a form of Fata Morgana mirage. [11] A Fata Morgana is a specific form of mirage caused by a stark temperature difference between air layers, which causes remote lights or objects actually beyond the horizon to appear visible above the horizon, often with considerable distortion. [1] [12] This explanation would also explain how reports of the sightings have changed over the years: The first reports and Aboriginal legends were of stationary lights, which would have been refractions over the horizon of campfires. Later reports are of lights that actively move. With a Fata Morgana mirage, this would be a refraction of car headlights over the horizon being reflected and being seen to move. The area of the Min Min lights are in a desert with known temperature inversions in the atmosphere.
The Min Min lights appear in the first episode of the second season of the Australian web television series Wolf Creek. [13] The Min Min lights also appear in Episode 16 of Season 3 of the Australian television series McLeod's Daughters . [14] In 2020, Australian band Custard released a single titled "The Min Min Lights" [15]
The bunyip is a creature from the aboriginal mythology of southeastern Australia, said to lurk in swamps, billabongs, creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes.
Fata Morgana often refers to:
A mirage is a naturally-occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays bend via refraction to produce a displaced image of distant objects or the sky. The word comes to English via the French (se) mirer, from the Latin mirari, meaning "to look at, to wonder at".
In folklore, a will-o'-the-wisp, will-o'-wisp, or ignis fatuus, is an atmospheric ghost light seen by travellers at night, especially over bogs, swamps or marshes. The phenomenon is known in much of European folklore by a variety of names, including jack-o'-lantern, friar's lantern, and hinkypunk, and is said to mislead travellers by resembling a flickering lamp or lantern. In literature, will-o'-the-wisp metaphorically refers to a hope or goal that leads one on, but is impossible to reach, or something one finds strange or sinister. Wills-o'-the-wisp appear in folk tales and traditional legends of numerous countries and cultures; notable named examples include St. Louis Light in Saskatchewan, the Spooklight in Southwestern Missouri and Northeastern Oklahoma, the Marfa lights of Texas, the Naga fireballs on the Mekong in Thailand, the Paulding Light in Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and the Hessdalen light in Norway.
Boulia is an outback town and locality in the Shire of Boulia, Queensland, Australia. In the 2016 census, Boulia had a population of 301 people.
The Marfa lights, also known as the Marfa ghost lights, have been observed near U.S. Route 67 on Mitchell Flat east of Marfa, Texas, in the United States. They have gained some fame as onlookers have attributed them to paranormal phenomena such as ghosts, UFOs, or will-o'-the-wisp. Scientific research suggests that most, if not all, are atmospheric reflections, automobile headlights or campfires.
The Hessdalen lights are unidentified lights which have been observed in a 12-kilometre-long (7.5 mi) stretch of the Hessdalen valley in rural central Norway periodically since at least the 1930s.
The Brown Mountain lights are purported ghost lights near Brown Mountain in North Carolina. The earliest published references to strange lights there are from around 1910, at about the same time electric lighting was becoming widespread in the area. In 1922, a USGS scientist, George R. Mansfield, used a map and an alidade telescope to prove that the lights that were being seen were trains, car headlights, and brush fires, which ended widespread public concern.
The Novaya Zemlya effect is a polar mirage caused by high refraction of sunlight between atmospheric thermal layers. The effect gives the impression that the sun is rising earlier than it actually should, and depending on the meteorological situation, the effect will present the Sun as a line or a square — sometimes referred to as the rectangular sun — made up of flattened hourglass shapes.
A Fata Morgana is a complex form of superior mirage visible in a narrow band right above the horizon. The term Fata Morgana is the Italian translation of "Morgan the Fairy". These mirages are often seen in the Italian Strait of Messina, and were described as fairy castles in the air or false land conjured by her magic.
Yowie is one of several names for an Australian folklore entity that is reputed to live in the Outback. The creature has its roots in Aboriginal oral history. In parts of Queensland, they are known as quinkin, and as joogabinna, in parts of New South Wales they are called Ghindaring, jurrawarra, myngawin, puttikan, doolaga, gulaga and thoolagal. Other names include yahweh, noocoonah, wawee, pangkarlangu, jimbra and tjangara. Yowie-type creatures are common in Aboriginal Australian legends, particularly in the eastern Australian states.
Australian folklore refers to the folklore and urban legends that have evolved in Australia from Aboriginal Australian myths to colonial and contemporary folklore including people, places and events, that have played part in shaping the culture, image and traditions that are seen in contemporary Old Australia.
Identifying unidentified flying objects (UFOs) is a difficult task due to the normally poor quality of the evidence provided by those who report sighting the unknown object. Observations and subsequent reporting are often made by those untrained in astronomy, atmospheric phenomena, aeronautics, physics, and perception. Nevertheless, most officially investigated UFO sightings, such as from the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book, have been identified as being due to honest misidentifications of natural phenomena, aircraft, or other prosaic explanations. In early U.S. Air Force attempts to explain UFO sightings, unexplained sightings routinely numbered over one in five reports. However, in early 1953, right after the CIA's Robertson Panel, percentages of unexplained sightings dropped precipitously, usually being only a few percent in any given year. When Project Blue Book closed down in 1970, only 6% of all cases were classified as being truly unidentified.
The Gurdon Light is an atmospheric ghost light located near railroad tracks in a wooded area of Gurdon, Arkansas. It is the subject of local folklore and has been featured in local media and on Unsolved Mysteries and Mysteries at the Museum. The tracks are no longer in use, and the rails at least partially removed/covered, but it remains one of the most popular Halloween attractions in the area. The light has been described as blue, green, white or orange and appearing to have a "bobbing" movement.
A flying saucer, also referred to as a flying disc, is a descriptive term for a type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. The term was coined in 1947 but has generally been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying objects, UFOs for short. Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability.
Atmospheric optics is "the study of the optical characteristics of the atmosphere or products of atmospheric processes .... [including] temporal and spatial resolutions beyond those discernible with the naked eye". Meteorological optics is "that part of atmospheric optics concerned with the study of patterns observable with the naked eye". Nevertheless, the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
Australian mythology stems largely from Europeans who colonised the country from 1788, subsequent domestic innovation, as well as other immigrant and Indigenous Australian traditions, many of which relate to Dreamtime stories. Australian mythology survives through a combination of word of mouth, historical accounts and the continued practice and belief in Dreamtime within Aboriginal communities.
Optical phenomena are any observable events that result from the interaction of light and matter.
Fata Morgana Land is a phantom island first sighted in the Arctic, off the north-eastern coast of Greenland in 1907 by J.P. Koch and Aage Bertelsen. It has been reported between Greenland and Svalbard, at the northern end of the Greenland Sea. It is a reflection of the nearby Tobias Island and does not actually exist. Its status as a mirage or phantom island was confirmed in 1993.
