AN EXAMINATION OF THE SOLAR MIRACLE OF FATIMA 1917
At the end of the apparitions of Mary in 1917 at Fatima, an apparition of the
sun, was reportedly viewed by thousands of people. The sun was variously
described as changing colour and spinning etc.
The Following Work Explains the Miracle of the Sun
http://www.meessen.net/AMeessen/MirSun.pdf
It is written by Professor Auguste Meessen
Institute of Physics, Catholic Univeristy of Louvain.
His thesis was that the miracle was an optical effect caused by looking at the sun for a time. Retinal after-images cause dancing effects. Bleaching of photosensitive retinal cells causes usually temporary damage and is responsible for the flashes of colour. ‘Apparitions and Miracles of the Sun’ International Forum in Porto "Science, Religion and Conscience" October 23–25, 2003 ISSN: 1645-6564
Auguste Meessen, Institute of Physics, Catholic University of Louvain :
meessen.net/AMeessen/MirSun.pdf wrote, "In November 2002, I looked directly into
the sun, at about 4 p.m. The sun was relatively low above the horizon and its
light intensity was attenuated, although the sky was clear. I was able to look
right into the sun and was amazed to see that the sun was immediately converted
into a grey disc, surrounded by a brilliant ring. The grey disc was
practically uniform, while the surrounding ring was somewhat irregular and
flamboyant, but did not extend beyond the solar disk. It coincided with its rim.
I stopped the experiment, since I wanted to be prudent, but I had experienced
myself the initial phase of a typical “miracle of the sun” and I could explain
it. The sun became grey, since my eyes immediately responded to its great
luminosity by an automatic reduction of their sensitivity…
He tried it again in December 2002, "I looked straight at the sun during a much
longer time. After some minutes, I saw impressive colours, up to 2 or 3 times
the diameter of the sun. They changed, but were mainly pink, deep blue, red and
green. Further away, the sky became progressively more luminous. I stopped
there, since I understood that these colours resulted from the fact that the
red, green and blue sensitive pigments are bleached and regenerated at different
rates".
All authorities on the solar miracle say there were reliable witnesses who saw
nothing. Scholar Mike Dash has determined that about half saw something. There
is no evidence that something started happening above and got their attention.
No they all got a cue to look up at the one time and then they started seeing
things. This does not look like a true miracle. The contradictions are quite
serious - some of those who saw signs did not report the sun racing down the sky
towards them. Others did and panicked. Some said the sun took a path and others
said it kept in its place and just spinned. Fr S Jaki found a witness who said
that the miraculous drying of clothes was a myth. And relatively few witnesses
say their clothes dried instantly. Spinning sun visions are quite common and it
seems true to form that they were seen again at Fatima after the solar miracle.
The "miracle" would have two ingredients, suggestion and what happens when you
look at the sun with your naked eyes.
However, enough data are on hand to force one to recognize the meteorological
nature of “the miracle of the sun” and to look askance at the phrase, “the sun
danced over Fatima.” That the miracle was not solar, that it did not imply any
“solar activity” in the scientific sense of that term, is indicated by the fact
that nothing unusual was registered by observatories about the sun at that hour.
Prior to that hour rain was coming down heavily over the area from the late
morning hours on, with the clouds being driven fast by a westerly wind across
the sky. A cold air mass was obviously moving in from the Atlantic, only at
about 40 kms from Fatima, which itself is at about 15 kms to the east from the
line where the land begins to form a plateau well over 300 meters above sea
level. The hollow field, Cova da Iria, outside Fatima is itself at about 370
meters. An actual view of the geographic situation is a great help for an
understanding of the true physical nature of “the miracle of the sun,”
especially when one takes a close look at cloud patterns typical over the Cova.
I feel that at this juncture I must summarize my explanation of the miracle. It
began at about 12:45 pm, solar time, after the rain suddenly stopped, and lasted
about ten to fifteen minutes. During all that time, the sun, that had not been
seen for hours, appeared through thin clouds, which one careful observer
described as cirrus clouds. Suddenly the sun’s image turned into a wheel of fire
which for the people there resembled a “rodo de fuogo” familiar to them in
fireworks. The physical core of that wheel was, as we now have to conjecture, an
air lens full of ice crystals, as cirrus clouds are. Such crystals can readily
refract the sun’s rays into various colors of the rainbow.
The references to the strong west-east wind and to the continued drift of clouds
may account for the interplay of two streams of air that could give a twist, in
a way analogous to the formation of tornadoes, to put that lens-shaped air mass
into rotation. Since many present there suddenly felt a marked increase in
temperature, it is clear that a sudden temperature inversion must have taken
place. The cold and warm air masses could conceivably propel that rotating air
lens in an elliptical orbit first toward the earth, and then push it up, as if
it were a boomerang, back to its original position. Meanwhile the ice crystals
in it acted as so many means of refraction for the sun’s rays. Some eyewitnesses
claimed that the “wheel of fire” descended and re-ascended three times;
according to others this happened twice. Overwhelmed by an extraordinary sight
that prompted most of the crowd to fall on their knees, even “detached”
observers could not perform as coolly as they would have wished. Only one
observer, a lawyer, stated three decades later that the path of descent and
ascent was elliptical with small circles superimposed on it.
Such an observation would make eminent sense to anyone familiar with fluid
dynamics or even with the workings of a boomerang. There is indeed plenty of
scientific information on hand to approach the miracle of the sun
scientifically. This is, however, not to suggest that one could reproduce the
event say in a wind tunnel. The carefully co-ordinated interplay of so many
physical factors would by itself be a miracle, even if one does not wish to see
anything more in what actually happened. Clearly, the “miracle” of the sun was
not a mere meteorological phenomenon, however rare. Otherwise it would have been
observed before and after, regardless of the presence of devout crowds or not. I
merely claim, which I did in my other writings on miracles, that in producing
miracles God often makes use of a natural substratum by greatly enhancing its
physical components and their interactions. One can indeed say, though not in
the sense intended by some Fatima writers, that the fingers of the Mother of God
played with the rays of the sun at that extraordinary hour at Fatima.
Stanley L. Jaki. A Mind’s Matter: An Intellectual Autobiography (Cambridge U.K.:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), Chapter 13 “A Portuguese
Proverb.”
CONCLUSION
The miracle at most would be God using nature to say something. It is not a
miracle as in a dead man rising. An unbeliever can say it is just all nature and
is proof that nature can do such extraordinary things to us that even a
well-supported miracle claim can be put down to being a non-miracle. It could be
nature making our mistakes coincide so that you no longer know they are mistakes
and you have what looks like a true miracle.