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The Unwavering Truth about the
Zodiacal Light
Aug
10, 2009
Too often, standard textbooks and
dictionaries do not offer a
realistic picture of what is known
about a given scientific subject. As
they tend to suppress anomalous
evidence, the illusion of solid
proven fact is then allowed to lull
the minds of the critical and the
curious and slow down the progress
of science.
The zodiacal light
is a case in point. This
little-known phenomenon is a roughly
triangular cone of light, produced
by sunlight reflecting off a cloud
of minuscule dust particles, of
cometary origin, that is scattered
across the ecliptic plane. At
mid-latitude, the light is often
mistaken for a ‘false dawn’, as it
is best seen in the east preceding
the dawn or in the west following
the evening twilight in respectively
spring and autumn. As the glow is so
faint – 10,000 times weaker than
that of a strong aurora – it is not
very surprising that, in Europe, the
zodiacal light was only discovered
in 1683 by the Italian astronomer,
Giovanni Cassini (1625-1712), while
the classical philosophers do not
seem to have known it at all.
That there is more to the zodiacal
light than reflected sunlight
follows from a spate of eyewitness
accounts of pulsations and other
unexpected fluctuations observed in
it. Cassini himself had noted
intermittent variations in the
brightness of the light and
concluded after just ten
observations that the axis of the
zodiacal light rose and sank not
with the ecliptic, but with the
equator of the sun. The intrepid
explorer and pioneer of
geomagnetism, Alexander, baron von
Humboldt (1769-1859), witnessed
similar perturbations during his
travels in South America:
“I have occasionally been
astonished, in the tropical climates
of South America, to observe the
variable intensity of the zodiacal
light. As I passed the nights,
during many months, in the open air,
on the shores of rivers and on
llanos, I enjoyed ample
opportunities of carefully examining
this phenomenon. When the zodiacal
light had been most intense, I have
observed that it would be
perceptibly weakened for a few
minutes, until it again suddenly
shone forth in full brilliancy. In
some few instances I have thought
that I could perceive – not exactly
a reddish coloration, nor the lower
portion darkened in an arc-like
form, nor even a scintillation, as
Mairan affirms he has observed – but
a kind of flickering and wavering of
the light. Must we suppose that
changes are actually in progress in
the nebulous ring?”
Until today, dithering scientists
have not addressed the question in
unison, but a number of inquisitive
scholars did at least acknowledge
the challenge. Kristian Birkeland,
Norway's most famous auroral
researcher, was gripped by the
problem. Birkeland was confident he
had witnessed oscillations in the
zodiacal light and was eager to
measure these, prompting his
impulsive departure to Sudan to
study the phenomenon. Birkeland’s
suspicion was that the pulsation in
“the intensity and shape of the
light … surely testifies to an
electric origin …” Indeed, it would
have to be “akin to the pulsation
which is sometimes seen in auroral
lights and the oscillations in
terrestrial magnetism.”
Birkeland buttressed this impression
with the testimony of George Jones
(1800-1870), a chaplain of the
United States Navy who had had a
marked interest in the zodiacal
light. On one occasion, Jones
reported “a swelling out, laterally
and upwards, of the zodiacal light,
with an increase of brightness in
the light itself; then in a few
minutes, a shrinking back of the
boundaries, and a dimming of the
light; the latter to such a degree
as to appear, at times, as if it was
quite dying away; and so back and
forth for about three quarters of an
hour …”
Birkeland accepted that a
substantial constituent of the
zodiacal light was due to reflected
sunlight, yet also reasoned that
some of the light is produced in the
same way as the aurorae – by an
excitation of particles.
Unfortunately, although his terrella
experiments seemed to support this
hypothesis, he was never able to
measure the oscillations.
Naked-eye observations of
pulsations, fast moving waves, a
temporary invisibility and
unexpected ‘parallaxes’ in the
zodiacal light continued to be made,
sometimes on timescales of a few
days. In 1990, the zodiacal light
was seen to brighten following a
fairly vigorous auroral display.
This led at least one modern
researcher, the late Neil Bone
(1959-2009), to admit that “the
diffuse glow of the zodiacal light…,
produced mainly by reflection of
sunlight from myriads of small
particles in the inner solar system
does have some association with
auroral effects.”
Clearly, the mystery of the zodiacal
light has not yet been fathomed and
there is much to be learned. In
modern terms, does Birkeland’s
proposed explanation in terms of
‘corpuscular rays’ or streams of
electrons emitted from the
equatorial plane of the sun
translate to a direct influence of
the solar wind on the zodiacal dust?
In that case, space scientists ought
not to vacillate, as, before long,
so little dust will be left that the
zodiacal light itself, unless
replenished, will become a thing of
the past. Though it may still be
long before the dust settles on the
scientific debate, now is the time
to act and obtain the measurements
Birkeland had so much desired to
make.
Contributed by Rens Van der Sluijs
www.mythopedia.info
Further Reading:The
Mythology of the World Axis;
Exploring the Role of Plasma in
World Mythology
www.lulu.com/content/1085275
The World Axis as an
Atmospheric Phenomenon
www.lulu.com/content/1305081
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