Summary
Folk tales are full of fleeting phenomena like will o' the wisps, faint glows that must have spooked our ancestors.
But these days, it's just about impossible to escape the omnipresent illumination of modern life, and these evocative spooklights have vanished like ghosts.
Chemist Andrea Sella explores the science of lights so dim, they can be witnessed only in complete darkness.
From the spontaneous combustion of marsh gas to the lightning sparks emitted by crushed sugar, Professor Sella finds there's more to light than ever meets the eye.
Transcript
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| 1:19.1 | In the modern electrified world we've forgotten the true blackness of night, but our ancestors knew it and the strange |
| 1:26.0 | fleeting lights that would occasionally appear in it. Weird spook lights, which are the subject |
| 1:31.3 | of a lecture by Professor Andrea Seller |
| 1:33.7 | recorded for this edition of Discovery from the BBC. |
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