\n<\/p>\n
September 29, 2025<\/p>\n
3 min read<\/p>\n
\u2018Ghost Fire\u2019 in Marshes Sparked by Strange Chemistry<\/p>\n
A phenomenon called microlightning may explain ghostly blue marsh lights<\/p>\n
By Rachel Nuwer edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier<\/span><\/p>\n An illustration of an ignis fatuus, or will-o\u2019-the-wisp, by Josiah Wood Whymper from the book Phenomena of Nature (1849).<\/p>\n Science & Society Picture Library\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Some call them will-o\u2019-the-wisps; others call them ignis fatuus, Latin for \u201cfoolish fire.\u201d Whatever the name, for centuries people have reported seeing these eerie, faint blue flames hovering over marshes, bogs and other wetlands. Various cultures interpreted the ephemeral aberrations as fairies, ghosts or spirits. Scientists have offered a different explanation: they form when methane and other gases from decaying material react with oxygen and briefly ignite, producing a flamelike glow.<\/p>\n For scientists, though, one big mystery still remained. Although will-o\u2019-the-wisps are not actual flames and occur at ambient temperatures, they still have to ignite somehow. The source of that ignition has been unknown.<\/p>\n Now a new paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA seems to provide an answer: microlightning, or tiny, spontaneous sparks of electricity that occur because of differences in charges on water droplets\u2019 surfaces. These droplets form when water bubbles containing methane rise and burst at the surface of the marsh, and the resulting sparks ignite the methane to create will-o\u2019-the-wisps\u2019 telltale luminescence.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n \u201cYour first reaction when you hear about this finding might be \u2018Okay, will-o\u2019-the-wisps are these ghostly, spooky things, but so what?\u2019\u201d says Richard Zare, a physical chemist at Stanford University and senior author of the findings. \u201cIn fact, the phenomenon we found\u2014related to how chemistry can be driven at interfaces\u2014is profound.\u201d<\/p>\n Water is neutral, which means it doesn\u2019t typically carry electric charge. But as early as 1892, scientists have noted that tiny droplets of water in the air can be positively or negatively charged in situations such as waterfall spray or fog. What Zare and his colleagues recently discovered, however, was that when two oppositely charged droplets get close to each other, electricity can suddenly rush between them, creating microlightning.<\/p>\n Zare and his colleagues first described and coined the term for microlightning in a March study published in Science Advances. In that study, they showed that when water sprays, some of the resulting micro droplets pick up opposite electric charges that can spark flashes of energy when they get close to one another. This spark can drive chemical reactions in the surrounding air that result in simple organic molecules. Zare and his colleagues hypothesized that this process might have generated some of the chemical building blocks for life on Earth.<\/p>\n Although the new study has less lofty implications, Zare says the mechanism is basically the same. His team\u2019s experimental setup was simple: in a beaker of water, the researchers introduced bubbles composed of methane and air. They captured high-speed videos of the bubbles hitting the surface of the water, forming micro droplets and producing tiny, faint flashes of light. The team also used mass spectrometry to provide additional evidence that the microlightning the researchers observed generated the energy to drive a reaction between methane and oxygen, converting them into different compounds.<\/p>\n The \u201cwell-executed\u201d new research \u201cstrongly suggests\u201d that microlightning is indeed the natural ignition mechanism responsible for will-o\u2019-the-wisps, says Wei Min, a chemist at Columbia University, who was not involved in the work.<\/p>\n But some mysteries do endure, Min adds. One big unanswered question, for example, is how, exactly, the strong electric fields form on the droplets\u2019 surface in the first place. The answer, he says, will have \u201cbroad implications to physics, chemistry, biology and engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" September 29, 2025 3 min read \u2018Ghost Fire\u2019 in Marshes Sparked by Strange Chemistry A phenomenon called microlightning may explain ghostly blue marsh lights By Rachel Nuwer edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier An illustration of an ignis fatuus, or will-o\u2019-the-wisp, by Josiah Wood Whymper from the book Phenomena of Nature (1849). Science & Society Picture<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[15008,15006,7606,3780,15007],"class_list":{"0":"post-24734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-chemistry","9":"tag-marsh","10":"tag-sparked","11":"tag-strange","12":"tag-willothewisps"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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