* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Friday, July 11, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Immersive sports and entertainment venue Cosm set to build its 5th location in Cleveland – WKYC

    Cosm Reveals Exciting Vision for Its 5th Immersive Sports and Entertainment Venue in Cleveland

    Monumental Sports & Entertainment’s Samantha Brady on the Power of the RSN’s Direct-to-Consumer Streaming Service Monumental+ – Sports Video Group

    Samantha Brady Reveals How Monumental+ is Transforming Sports Streaming with Direct-to-Consumer Access

    Moses Singer Welcomes Entertainment and Intellectual Property Partner Frederick Bimbler – Yahoo Finance

    Moses Singer Expands Team with New Entertainment and Intellectual Property Partner Frederick Bimbler

    Longhua District and Max-Matching Entertainments, supported by RWS Global forge strategic partnership to develop international IP-themed entertainment complex – Amusement Today

    Longhua District and Max-Matching Entertainments, supported by RWS Global forge strategic partnership to develop international IP-themed entertainment complex – Amusement Today

    Government whip to withdraw Entertainment Complex Bill on July 9 – Nation Thailand

    Government whip to withdraw Entertainment Complex Bill on July 9 – Nation Thailand

    Magicians and Battlebots light up Las Vegas entertainment scene – KSNV

    Magicians and Battlebots Take Las Vegas Entertainment by Storm

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Stallion Uranium Provides Update on Technology Data Acquisition Agreement – GlobeNewswire

    Stallion Uranium Announces Exciting Progress in Technology Data Acquisition Agreement

    2025 WE Local Prague Recap: Inspiring Women in Engineering and Technology – Society of Women Engineers

    2025 WE Local Prague Recap: Inspiring Women in Engineering and Technology – Society of Women Engineers

    SMPTE Opens Early Bird Registration for Media Technology Summit – TVTechnology

    SMPTE Launches Early Bird Registration for Exciting Media Technology Summit

    Google Fiber puts Nokia network slicing technology to the test – Fierce Network

    Google Fiber Puts Nokia’s Network Slicing Technology to the Ultimate Test

    Kaseya Extends Community Investment with Addition of Technology Marketing Toolkit – Kaseya

    Kaseya Extends Community Investment with Addition of Technology Marketing Toolkit – Kaseya

    AI and the Trust Revolution: How Technology Is Transforming Human Connections – Foreign Affairs

    AI and the Trust Revolution: How Technology Is Transforming Human Connections – Foreign Affairs

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Immersive sports and entertainment venue Cosm set to build its 5th location in Cleveland – WKYC

    Cosm Reveals Exciting Vision for Its 5th Immersive Sports and Entertainment Venue in Cleveland

    Monumental Sports & Entertainment’s Samantha Brady on the Power of the RSN’s Direct-to-Consumer Streaming Service Monumental+ – Sports Video Group

    Samantha Brady Reveals How Monumental+ is Transforming Sports Streaming with Direct-to-Consumer Access

    Moses Singer Welcomes Entertainment and Intellectual Property Partner Frederick Bimbler – Yahoo Finance

    Moses Singer Expands Team with New Entertainment and Intellectual Property Partner Frederick Bimbler

    Longhua District and Max-Matching Entertainments, supported by RWS Global forge strategic partnership to develop international IP-themed entertainment complex – Amusement Today

    Longhua District and Max-Matching Entertainments, supported by RWS Global forge strategic partnership to develop international IP-themed entertainment complex – Amusement Today

    Government whip to withdraw Entertainment Complex Bill on July 9 – Nation Thailand

    Government whip to withdraw Entertainment Complex Bill on July 9 – Nation Thailand

    Magicians and Battlebots light up Las Vegas entertainment scene – KSNV

    Magicians and Battlebots Take Las Vegas Entertainment by Storm

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Stallion Uranium Provides Update on Technology Data Acquisition Agreement – GlobeNewswire

    Stallion Uranium Announces Exciting Progress in Technology Data Acquisition Agreement

    2025 WE Local Prague Recap: Inspiring Women in Engineering and Technology – Society of Women Engineers

    2025 WE Local Prague Recap: Inspiring Women in Engineering and Technology – Society of Women Engineers

    SMPTE Opens Early Bird Registration for Media Technology Summit – TVTechnology

    SMPTE Launches Early Bird Registration for Exciting Media Technology Summit

    Google Fiber puts Nokia network slicing technology to the test – Fierce Network

    Google Fiber Puts Nokia’s Network Slicing Technology to the Ultimate Test

    Kaseya Extends Community Investment with Addition of Technology Marketing Toolkit – Kaseya

    Kaseya Extends Community Investment with Addition of Technology Marketing Toolkit – Kaseya

    AI and the Trust Revolution: How Technology Is Transforming Human Connections – Foreign Affairs

    AI and the Trust Revolution: How Technology Is Transforming Human Connections – Foreign Affairs

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

What’s that lurking in the mist? Inside the eerie science of bogs

February 17, 2024
in Science
What’s that lurking in the mist? Inside the eerie science of bogs
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

ByKit Chapman

Published February 16, 2024

Bogs are rich in storied horror, and the wetlands of eastern England are no exception.

The phantom lights of the will o’ the wisp; the devil-dog Black Shuck lurking in the mist; strange rings where fairies dance, witchcraft rules, and only fools trespass—tales of the area are fraught with supernatural peril.

Even today, the region’s 1,500 square miles of wetlands, which stretch from the chill bite of the North Sea to the spires of Cambridge, are a lonely place once the sun sets. It is all too easy to find yourself submerged in fetid water, or sucked into a slurry of thick, black mud.

The Fens, as they’re called locally, are not alone. Similar wetlands are found across the globe, each with a name that has a subtly different meaning. Bogs and fens (bogs are more acidic) are formed in lake basins, created by glaciers receding during the last ice age, and are now filled with rotting and decayed plant matter called peat. This is often capped with sphagnum moss, making the ground soft and treacherous. Marshes, meanwhile, are flooded areas near rivers and coasts, the surface peppered with reeds and soft-stalked shrubs. Substitute these herbaceous plants for woody stumps and trees, and you have a swamp.

Regardless of what they’re called, these realms are a fertile ground for our ghostly folklore.

Mysterious lights in the fog

Fog is one of the most formidable dangers in a bog.

“If you have enough relative humidity—water in the air—you get condensation onto aerosol particles,” says Nadine Borduas-Dedekind, an atmospheric chemist at the University of British Columbia, Canada. “If you went to the Arctic, you’d never see fog as there are very few particles in the air. But in a swamp, there’s biogenic material and water spray.”

The main culprits for this fog are volatile organic compounds—small particles given off by plants that quickly evaporate. These, Borduas-Dedekind explains, oxidize in the air, forming larger molecules that can easily absorb water and form clouds.

The time of day this happens is also key to a wetland’s illusions.

As the sun sets, the surface of the Earth cools. This makes the air denser and increases relative humidity, condensing more water vapor, and resulting in a phenomenon known as radiation fog. This type of thick, low-lying cloud typically appears late at night or just before dawn—exactly the moment our tired minds are likely to start seeing shapes in the dark. It’s small wonder fiction’s greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes, faced the savage Hound of the Baskervilles amid the nocturnal mists of a mire.

Perhaps its unsurprising, then, that another of the wetlands’ supernatural foes also plays with our disquiet in the dark. Will o’ the wisp—also known as ignis fatuus, jack-o’-lantern, or fool’s light—are ghostly torches, said to lure travellers off the safe paths through the bogs and draw them into a sump from which they never return. Although accounts of these lights have vanished in modern times, stories of such ghost lights still permeate our culture, inspiring both the Dead Marshes of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and the pumpkins we put out at Halloween.

Numerous scientific explanations have been offered up for these lights. The most plausible is phosphine gas, created from the fermentation of plant matter inside the soil’s low-oxygen environment. As chemists at the University of Pavia, Italy, observed in 2013, the phosphine bubbles up to the surface, where it encounters nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere, a reaction that triggers a faint glow known as chemiluminescence.

This pale light is only visible in pitch darkness, explaining why it’s no longer seen in our modern world filled with streetlights and distant homes.

A home to fairy rings and bog bodies

Even during the day, these English wetlands still have spots that send a shiver up the spine.

Anyone who has ventured into a marsh is likely to have come across a fairy ring: a strange patch of ground where the plant life is markedly different, often for no apparent reason. These are said to indicate the realm of the Fae, and an area that shouldn’t be disturbed.

Science supports our instinct to avoid these glades—though not because of fairies. Instead, they may be the site of a clandestine burial.

“Decomposition completely changes soil chemistry,” says Amy Rattenbury, a forensic scientist at Wrexham University, U.K. “We call it a ‘cadaver decomposition island’. Fluids leak into the soil, and kill off plant life initially, but then the body becomes a source of nutrition. Previously, you might have had a few different species of plant fighting for the same space. Then, all of a sudden, you get the optimum conditions for a particular species.”

The effect creates a distinct pattern on the ground. “You can see the outline of what’s buried. We’ve noticed that nettles seem to do better where there’s decomposition, compared with where there isn’t.”

There are also far older corpses in the mire.

Peat is acidic and low in oxygen, which prevents decomposition and creates an environment free from microbes. The sphagnum moss on the surface also helps to preserve corpses, releasing humic acids which deactivate the digestive enzymes in a body’s gut, expel water from cells, and cause the collagen fibers in skin to cross-link with each other. Over time, this effectively tans a corpse’s flesh into leather. The result is that a bog body may be found centuries, or even thousands of years, after it fell into the peat; the oldest known, Koelbjerg Man from Denmark, died in around 8,000 B.C.

Like all good ghost stories, it seems there’s a kernel of truth about something lurking beneath the surface of our swamps.

Kit Chapman is a science writer based in Falmouth, U.K.

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : National Geographic – https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/bogs-fens-wetlands-folklore

Tags: lurkingscienceWhat’s
Previous Post

8 fine-dining restaurants in the UK worth travelling for

Next Post

Northern California’s oyster capital is a hidden gem

Rice Museum: Architecture Rooted in Rural Memory and Ecology – ArchDaily

Rice Museum: Architecture Rooted in Rural Memory and Ecology – ArchDaily

July 11, 2025
Japan Shifts Space Policy from Science to Security – JAPAN Forward

Japan Shifts Space Policy from Science to Security – JAPAN Forward

July 11, 2025
Scientists Develop Glowing Tool To Reveal Cancer Cells – Newsweek

Scientists Develop Glowing Tool To Reveal Cancer Cells – Newsweek

July 11, 2025
The Real Lifestyle And WILDGO Partner To Transform Tokenized Real Estate – BlockchainReporter

The Real Lifestyle And WILDGO Partner To Transform Tokenized Real Estate – BlockchainReporter

July 11, 2025
A Lean World Health Organization for the Global Good – Center for Global Development

Transforming the World Health Organization for Greater Global Impact

July 11, 2025
I upgraded to premium economy for a 13-hour flight on a budget airline. It lacked some perks, but it was still worth the price. – Business Insider

I Upgraded to Premium Economy on a 13-Hour Budget Airline Flight – Here’s What It Was Really Like

July 11, 2025

Givēon’s Soul-Stirring Old-School R&B Heartbreak

July 11, 2025
Blanchard Valley Health System Announces Changes to the Board of Trustees – Bluffton Icon

Blanchard Valley Health System Announces Exciting Updates to Board of Trustees

July 11, 2025
IRS clears way for churches to endorse political candidates – Fox Business

IRS clears way for churches to endorse political candidates – Fox Business

July 11, 2025
Stallion Uranium Provides Update on Technology Data Acquisition Agreement – GlobeNewswire

Stallion Uranium Announces Exciting Progress in Technology Data Acquisition Agreement

July 11, 2025

Categories

Archives

July 2025
MTWTFSS
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031 
« Jun    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (716)
  • Economy (739)
  • Entertainment (21,626)
  • General (15,836)
  • Health (9,776)
  • Lifestyle (746)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (741)
  • Politics (749)
  • Science (15,957)
  • Sports (21,237)
  • Technology (15,724)
  • World (722)

Recent News

Rice Museum: Architecture Rooted in Rural Memory and Ecology – ArchDaily

Rice Museum: Architecture Rooted in Rural Memory and Ecology – ArchDaily

July 11, 2025
Japan Shifts Space Policy from Science to Security – JAPAN Forward

Japan Shifts Space Policy from Science to Security – JAPAN Forward

July 11, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version