Marfa Lights – From Magnetosphere or Pterosaurs?

In James Bunnell’s book Hunting Marfa Lights, he examines the possibility that the truly mysterious Marfa Lights are related to the solar wind slamming into the earth’s magnetosphere. This idea may have come primarily from the spectacular light displays of Northern Lights and Southern Lights. A secondary factor in this conjecture relates to when the ML’s (mystery lights around Marfa, Texas) appear: only at night; and the night-side of the earth has an elongated portion of the magnetosphere. Nevertheless, there are problems.

On page 175 of Bunnell’s book, a detailed table shows ML events from late 2000 through early 2008. There is no coorelation with Solar Halos, and those major solar eruptions slam into the magnetosphere most violently. If the solar wind caused those mysterious Marfa Lights during those seven and a half years, there would surely be a relationship with Solar Halos; there was no relationship. The number of ML events on that table is thirty-three, making that examination statistically significant.

Bunnell recognized that problem but still hoped that the elongated magnetosphere on the night side might still have some relationship to the only-nocturnal ML’s. We need to remember that Mr. Bunnell is a rocket scientist (literally); he is not a biologist. In addition, he probably has had little or no exposure to eyewitness reports of glowing pterosaurs living in North America and in other parts of the world, especially in the southwest Pacific. Although the idea seems too extraordinary, if there were intelligent bioluminescent flying predators in southwest Texas, it would be natural for them to use their bioluminescence only at night, for the energy needed for such spectacular bright displays may be significant; why waste the energy in daylight, when it would be of little or no benefit for the organisms?

But there is another serious problem with the magnetosphere being related to the mysterious Marfa Lights that Bunnell calls “CE-III.” Why would a huge structure far above the earth cause the strange horizontal dancing, the splittings and rejoinings, and the fast horizontal flights that are at least somewhat similar to the speed of fast birds? There seems to be no relationship with those two vastly divergent phenomena.