The ancient mariners were right. Tales of "milky seas" that glow bluish-white at night and extend as far as the horizon have been spun by sailors for centuries. Now this eerie glow has been spotted from space.
Steve Miller of the US Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey, California, found this strange phenomenon in a trawl through archives of satellite cloud-cover data. Though the effect has been reported more than 200 times since 1915, he could find only one account that documented the precise time and location of an observation - in the north-western Indian Ocean in 1995.
"I didn't really expect to see anything in the corresponding satellite data, because the light is so weak," says Miller. "But serendipity intervened, and I found a possible match within 30 minutes."
When Miller and his colleagues amplified the signal, a bright structure that followed the sea surface currents popped out. The structure ...
18:00 07 October 2008
17:56 07 October 2008Subscribe today at only USD $5.95 for your first 4 issues and get New Scientist, the world's leading science & technology news magazine delivered direct to your door every week
As a magazine subscriber you will benefit from instant access to:
