CASE FILE · DD-31
Australia's Min Min lights
Period · 전승·20세기–현재Place · Queensland outback, Australia
01 · OVERVIEW
Case overview
Min Min lights are reported across western Queensland and the Australian outback as nocturnal lights that move, approach or maintain distance. Aboriginal oral traditions and settler accounts are both cited. Australian researchers reproduced a mechanism in which distant headlights or other sources are refracted by temperature inversions and appear above the horizon as a Fata Morgana-type mirage. This can explain many reports without verifying every account individually.
A sign at Boulia, a centre of Min Min light folklore; it is not a photograph of the phenomenon.
Wikimedia Commons contributor · see source for licence ↗03 · IMAGE CONTEXT
Image analysis
The sign shows how the phenomenon became part of regional identity and tourism. Assessing an actual light requires direction, weather and distant-source data.04 · EVIDENCE REVIEW
Nature of the evidence
Long regional sighting tradition and experimental work on atmospheric refraction
Light source in each report and how broadly the natural mechanism applies
Multiple witnessesMilitary · institutional
05 · SOURCE TRAIL