Abstract
THE occurrence, during a tropical thunderstorm between Singapore and Bangkok on the morning of May 21, 1936, of a diffused white light over the surface of the sea, pulsating at regular intervals of about two to the second, so that the ship seemed to be sailing through waves of light and darkness, was referred to by a correspondent in The Times of June 26. The phenomenon is said to have continued for about half an hour. Another correspondent referred to a similar phenomenon in the Persian Gulf in March 1908, when waves of light were observed wheeling round the ship. Both these phenomena would appear to have been due not to electrical conditions but to phosphorescence. A description and sketch of a “Phosphorescent Wheel” near Sumatra (with an interval of about one second between the waves of light) is given in the Marine Observer of the Meteorological Office of November 1926; waves of light with an interval of half a second were observed on October 27, 1924, at 1 a.m. near Krakatoa Island (Marine Observer, October 1925); streaks of luminescence, observed in January 1927 in the Equatorial Atlantic, were practically parallel with the wind, which was south-east, about force 4 (Marine Observer, January 1928). These observations indicate that phosphorescence is not uniform over the wave profile, and consequently streaks of light will appear to an observer on board ship to move as the ship moves relative to the waves. Phosphorescence is most readily observed on ripples or on the breaking crests of waves, and while no one has yet worked out in detail the conditions under which the streaks will appear, the period of pulsation, which is reported as 0-5-1 second, is probably equal to the interval of time between the passage of the ship over successive waves.
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Luminous Phenomena on the Sea during a Thunderstorm. Nature 138, 278 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138278b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138278b0