The wheel of light

I absolutely love the fact that there are real phenomena that science hasn't yet explained.

It's not just from the standpoint of "scientists will always have a job," although that's part of it.  I'm also captivated by that sense of wonder I had as a child, contemplating something I'd noticed or heard about, and thinking, "Wow... I wonder how that works?"

A good example is something I first ran into a long time ago, from the delightful collection Strangely Enough! by C. B. Colby.  This book is a compendium of two-to-three page descriptions of what can probably best be described as Forteana -- odd or anomalous phenomena of various types.  Some are humorous; some are stories of hauntings, cryptids, and UFOs; a few are clearly in the realm of the tall tale.  (One that straddles the line between all of them is the scary story called "Whistle," about a elderly woman living with her dog in a small house in the hill country who hears a distant whistling noise, which gradually gets closer and closer.  It's terrifying in its subtlety and suggestiveness.  It was made into a seven-minute short film in 2008 by Eric Walter and Jon Parke which is well worth watching, preferably not when you're alone at night.)

One of the stories in Strangely Enough! that caught my eye when I first read it as a teenager was about a peculiar marine phenomenon that turns out to be absolutely real -- and still unexplained (although there is one possible explanation I'll get to).  It's nicknamed "Poseidon's wheel," and is most commonly seen at night in the Indian Ocean and tropical south Pacific, although it's been observed elsewhere multiple times.  Sailors report a giant, glowing wheel, with radial spokes like a wagon wheel, slowly rotating underwater.  

Here's the account in Colby's book, about an instance of the phenomenon observed from the Danish ship Bintang, in June of 1909 in the Straits of Malacca:

As the Bintang was steaming through the night in the Straits of Malacca, between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, the captain was astonished to see what appeared to be a long beam of light under the water.  Like the beam of a searchlight, it seemed to be sweeping across the floor of the sea.  The beam passed across the sea before him and was followed by another and then another, like the revolving spokes of a wheel, or searchlight beams following one another across the sky.

Soon, some distance from the ship, there appeared a brighter spot or hub, from which the long beams of underwater light seemed to stem.  The beam revolved slowly as the rotating "wheel" slowly approached the Bintang.  In the words of the captain, "Long arms issued from a center around which the whole system appeared to rotate."

The great revolving wheel was so huge that only half of it could be seen above the horizon.  As it revolved toward the Bintang, the crew stared in dumbfounded amazement.  Looking around, they realized that the long arms of light could not possibly be a reflection of their own lights, and there was no other ship in sight.

As the great silent revolving wheel of underwater light came nearer, it seemed to sink lower into the water and grow dimmer and dimmer.  Finally it vanished deep beneath the waves and the Straits of Malacca were once more black and empty.

It'd be tempting to dismiss this as falling into the "tall tale" category, but the Bintang is hardly the only ship whose crew reports seeing Poseidon's wheel.  Here's one of the best-documented accounts, from U. S. Naval Commander J. R. Bodler in 1952 (edited for length; you can read the entire account at the link provided):

My vessel had passed through the Strait of Hormuz, bound for India.  Little Quoin Island Light was still in sight on the starboard quarter, bearing 305° T, distance 20 miles.  The night was bright and clear, with very good visibility, no Moon.  The Third Mate called me to the bridge, saying that he had observed something he thought I should see.

About four points on the port bow, toward the coast of Iran, there was a luminous band which seemed to pulsate.  Its appearance suggested the aurora borealis, but much lower; in fact on or below the horizon.  Examination with binoculars showed that the luminous area was definitely below the horizon, in the water, and drawing nearer to the vessel.  With the approach of this phenomenon it became apparent that the pulsations seemed to start in the center of the band and flow outward towards its extremities.

At a distance of about a mile from the ship, it was apparent that the disturbance was roughly circular in shape, about 1000 to 1500 feet in diameter.  The pulsations could now be seen to be caused by a revolving motion of the entire pattern about a rather ill-defined center; with streaks of light like the beams of search-lights, radiating outward from the center and revolving (in a counterclockwise direction) like the spokes of a gigantic wheel.

For several minutes the vessel occupied the approximate center of the phenomenon.  Slightly curved bands of light crossed the bow, passed rapidly down the port side from bow to stern, and up the starboard side from aft, forward.  The luminosity was sufficient to make portions of the vessels upper work’s quite visible.  The bands of luminance seemed to pass a given point at about half-second intervals.  As may well be imagined, the effect was weird and impressive in the extreme; with the vessel seeming to occupy the center of a huge pinwheel whose “spokes” consisted of phosphorescent luminance revolving rapidly about the vessel as a hub...

The central “hub” of the phenomenon drew gradually to starboard, and passed aft; becoming more and more distant on the starboard quarter.  While it was still in sight, several miles astern, and appearing, by this time, as a pulsating band of light, a repetition of the same manifestation appeared fine on the starboard bow.  This was slightly smaller in area than the first, and a trifle less brilliant.  Its center passed slowly aft on the starboard side, with the pattern of revolving, luminous “spokes” clearly defined...

It is the present writer’s conviction that he has been privileged to witness one of the rare instances of a most curious and impressive natural phenomenon.  If other seafarers have had a similar experience, or anyone of scientific bent can offer an explanation of the foregoing, he would be most interested to learn more on the subject.

This phenomenon has been seen dozens of times, and described and sketched by crew members -- but to my knowledge, never successfully photographed.  Of course, paranormal "explanations" abound, including underwater alien craft (USOs?  Unidentified Swimming Objects?  I dunno).  But the most reasonable explanation I've heard has to do with a microscopic life form called a dinoflagellate.

Dinoflagellates are single-celled plankton, mostly marine.  They are nearly all harmless, although a few, like the species Karenia brevis, produce toxins -- Karenia is the one responsible for "red tide."  A couple, like the rather horrifying parasite Pfiesteria, are pathogenic.  

One group of dinoflagellates does something remarkable, though.  They're bioluminescent -- capable of using chemical reactions to produce light.  The evolutionary purpose is uncertain; it's hard to imagine what they gain by it.  But when there are enough of them present, the result is rather spectacular.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons © Hans Hillewaert, Noctiluca scintillans, CC BY-SA 4.0]

What's relevant here -- besides the obvious bit that we have something underwater producing light -- is that bioluminescent dinoflagellates like Noctiluca produce light when the water is agitated.  When there's a bloom of Noctiluca, every wave crashing on the beach appears to sparkle -- a truly breathtaking sight.

Recall that the two sightings mentioned above, and as far as I know, all of the other accounts of the phenomenon, occurred from the decks of engine-propelled ships.  Ship engines produce a lot of noise, and some of it is subsonic -- large-wavelength, low-frequency compression waves radiating out from the belly of the ship.

As those compressional waves move through the water, perhaps that agitation is triggering light from the local population of bioluminescent dinoflagellates.  The "spoke" pattern could be explained by this; it might be that there's a standing wave being created, and the regularly spaced nodes and antinodes of the underwater sound waves correspond to (respectively) the dark and light bands.

One thing this doesn't explain, however -- at least not as far as I can see -- is that in most of the eyewitness accounts, the hub of the wheel appeared to be stationary, and the ship approached and then passed it.  If the source of the disturbance creating the light was the ship itself, you'd think the pattern would be centered on the ship, and then would travel with it (at least as long as it was in water containing the microorganisms).

So Poseidon's wheel remains a mystery, and the scientific explanation very much only a working hypothesis.

It's an intriguing phenomenon.  It's been documented far too many times to be an outright hoax or misrepresentation; and many of the people describing it fall into category of "credible witness with no particular reason to lie."  So at this point, we still don't know what's going on. 

But like I said, that's part of the fun of science.  We don't understand everything, not by a longshot.  There's still plenty to look at and wonder about.  And if you're ever sailing through the tropics, keep an eye out.  You might see a vast, glowing underwater wheel, rotating slowly -- and witness one of the weirdest unexplained phenomena I've ever heard about.

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Elegy for an unpredictable universe

I was asked not too long ago how, as an atheist, I cope with tragedy.

"I don't see how you could possibly find a way to understand loss and grief," my friend said, "without some sense that there's a larger meaning in the universe."

In some ways, of course, I don't.  Not only do I not believe there's meaning in the universe (at least not in the sense he meant), I don't understand loss and grief at all.  I experience it, all too deeply -- I've lost both parents and a beloved grandmother, not to mention friends and colleagues.  It's impossible to live 53 years without going through the sorrow that comes with knowing that you will never, ever see someone you care about again.

But it is when the magnitude of the loss is amplified -- as it was yesterday with the announcement that Malaysia Flight 370 was almost certain to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, killing all 239 people on board -- that we struggle hardest to wrap our brains around what has happened.  How could the world be so built, we think, that something like this could occur?

It brings back one of the formative books of my teenage years, Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey.  This book chronicles the search by the 17th century Franciscan monk Brother Juniper, who is shocked when a bridge in his Peruvian village collapses, killing six people.  He is a devout man, and is certain that god must have had a reason for bringing those six onto the bridge, and no others, in time to die when the cable holding the bridge aloft snapped.  So he traces the life history of each of the six, trying to see if he can discern a pattern -- to see if he can read god's mind, determine what it was that led those particular six people to die when hundreds of others crossed the bridge daily and survived.

In the end, of course, he fails; and he concludes that either god's mind is too subtle, too deep to parse, or else there is no pattern, and things simply happen because they happen.

 It is a devastating conclusion.

Brother Juniper's search for meaning in apparent chaos is the genesis, I think, of religion, not to mention other worldviews perhaps less sanctified.  When you think about it, conspiracy theories come from the same place; a desperate need for there to be a reason, even a dark one, behind all of the bad stuff that happens in the world.  It seems that many of us would rather there be an explanation -- even if, in Christopher Moore's vivid turn of phrase, it involves "heinous fuckery most foul."  Better that than the universe being some kind of giant pinball game.

And in extremis, even we atheists still look for explanations, don't we?  Faced with tragedy, the first thing I've asked is, "Why me?", as if there is some answer to that question that is even possible given my philosophical worldview.  But it's a natural inclination, and seems to be universal to the human condition.  It is this aghast recognition that the world could treat us this badly that was captured in the starkly beautiful painting by Eugène Delacroix, depicting a Greek woman looking at the ruins of her home after her town was sacked by the Turks:

Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi, 1826 [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Sometimes there is no reason, no pattern; the world's machinery seems to work much of the time without any regard to us at all.  I flew Malaysia Airlines a year and a half ago, from Kuala Lumpur to Hong Kong, and arrived there safely; two weeks ago, a similar bunch of passengers, expecting (as I did) nothing more than a few hours of tedium, ended their lives in the turbulent waters of the Indian Ocean.  And if you think that the phrase "there but for the grace of god go I" hasn't gone through my head more than once in the last few days, you're sorely mistaken.

Of course, for an atheist, that phrase is only a metaphor, and perhaps not even a very good one.  I don't have the recourse of falling back on "they're with god now" or even "god has a plan."  All I'm left with is a sense that the universe is a strange, chaotic, and unpredictable place, full of beauty and goodness and love and pleasure, and pain and danger and fear and death, sometimes meted out in unequal parts and in ways that I will never really comprehend.  But I do know one thing: we need to be more conscious, right now, about the gratitude and compassion with which we treat the people around us.  None of us have any idea how many minutes we will be given; none of us have time to waste.  Hug your loved ones, your friends, your pets -- hell, hug total strangers if you want to.  There is nothing certain about tomorrow, so you damn well better make every second of today count.

As Thornton Wilder put it in the last line of The Bridge of San Luis Rey: "There is a land of the living and a land of the dead; and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."