IEA GOOD QUESTIONS

From: Maylin Medina, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX (Printed with permission)

I am doing a research paper on the Marfa Lights and have a few questions. I was wondering if you have read the study that the University of Dallas did on the Marfa lights (www.spsnational.org/wormhole/utd_sps_report.pdf) and what are your thoughts on this particular explanation? I read the article on the Marfa Lights and I am still a little confused as what to what the IEA thinks they are. Thanks so much for your time!

Hope to hear from you soon!

Hello Maylin,

Thank you for contacting us and sending the student's paper. I had not read that particular one. The students were right, and they were wrong!

The paper falls far short of "proving" the Marfa lights are car headlights. They have identified a common and valid artifact, but it is an error to think that one plausible explanation is the only explanation.

The situation is, most of the so called Marfa Light observations are indeed artifacts, car headlights, train lights, ranch lights, motorcycles etc. However, sightings date back to times before cars existed and interviews with old timers tell a different story. They all agree that the Marfa phenomenon is relative rare, maybe once out of every ten days or so and just a few days of observation not likely to be able to see the "real" lights. I believe that the report on the IEA web site from the 2001 expedition, shows a video of the sighting of car headlights as one of many artifacts.

Several papers have been written attempting to explain the Marfa lights. From someone who has seen and photographed the lights it is obvious that many of these authors have never seen a "real" Marfa light and draw erroneous conclusions. Other papers that try to explain the lights as albedo or a reflective ground surface, or phosphorescent animals are just plain ridiculous. In spite of high-tech sounding equipment they failed to describe anything that looked like a real light (similar to stars on the ground). Some authors seemed perplexed that the lights they saw from the ground could not be seen from the air....pretty much what a car headlight would do.

So the bottom line is that the students did a good job of describing car headlights but did not observe enough nights to see the real lights, which would of course, occur at an entirely different location. We do agree that the Marfa area is full of artifacts and that is what most people see.

As for what we think the lights are, we don't know and feel there is not enough valid data to speculate. We have measured some anomalous magnetic fields and we and our Norwegian colleagues have photographed a continuous spectrum but we need more data. We continue to to take geophysical measurements at areas where earthlights occur, but because of their rarity, it is difficult to have the luck to photograph a sighting at the same time instruments are running. It is also imperative to know the area one is investigating very well. For that reason we have mostly abandoned the idea of brief field observations, and have focused on setting up an observatory where data can be acquired 24/7.

Hope this helps.