What Are Glowing on Lake Ontario Beach at Night

[Charline]

A few days ago, I went to Toronto Islands to see if I could see anything glowing in the dark.


The result was promising.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDLnoovF6pw

[Shortsighted]

I swear Charline, you are a bit of a hero to me.  Not only do you come up with good ideas by thinking outside the box but you have the drive to pursue them, although you did give a credit to your club for the adventure.  I'm half dead by the time it gets dark from working on building a speaker (project) for my neighbour during the day and you are up and out in the cold winter air, on a ferry to the island in order to search for fluorescence.  Fluorescence is about as hard to find as inspiration these days. They don't make em like you anymore.  The password of the early 21st century is LAZY.  You are certainly as far removed from lazy as it is possible to scale.  Maybe you just have a thing for UV light.  I get that.

I'm no geologist, or even an apologist, but I think that I get the gist of what you may have found, a piece of fluorescent Syenite, an igneous rock with very little quartz but lots of feldspar (maybe Peristerite) and Sodalite.  Not common on the shores of the Great Lakes but there is some around, mostly around L. Superior.  The stone with the odd-shaped pale inclusions is porphyry (basalt with phenocryst inclusions) or perhaps andesite, but more likely the first one because it is very common.  You do take extra batteries, don't you?

[Charline]

Thank you very much for your kind words and geological advice.


I returned with some friends the next day. We found some interesting ones.


One is a conglomerate with at least a dozen pebbles. Had I seen it in daylight, I would have assumed it was a degraded concrete block. It looks crazy under UV light. That one would be for another video on its own soon.


My back pain has been at its worst. Whenever I got a bit better, if I put on my backpack even without much in it, the acute pain would return. The clip was photographed with my smartphone. My telephoto lenses are taking a vacation.


It sounds crazy to do the things I am doing, but I only live once. Who knows if I would be able to do it again? If I stay at home, I still have the pain, but without the pleasure of discovery.


More to come.

[Shortsighted]

I'm sorry to hear about your chronic back pain, probably one of the most common maladies affecting all humanity.  If due to RA it helps to move about to redistribute accumulated inflammatory fluids, while if due to OA then movement might make it worse.  The rule-of-thumb, which should really be renamed a rule-of-back is that back pain requires rest, especially if it is due to a herniated disk, until it gradually reduces to its intended position between the vertebrae.  I hope your backpack has a hip strap to remove weight from your shoulders and direct that weight to your hips.  I sometimes forget to cinch my strap and walk around until it hurts and then realize my oversight and cinch it tight around my waist an voila, it still hurts, but less so.  Thank goodness for acetaminophen used proactively whenever the game's afoot, eh Watson.  I think I might dream about UV lights tonight, thousands of them storming the beaches in search of batteries.  How about a ferry full of people wearing fluorescent shirts and a rotating UV strobe flood light.  An antonym for subtle would describe it best.
 

[Shortsighted]

It occurred to me afterwards that your sample just might have been even more interesting that merely a superb find of fluorescent sodalite in a sample of igneous syenite.  A rare form of sodalite exists is relative abundance in Ontario.  I mentioned it to you once before.  It's called hackmenite and it has the property of tenebrescence.  Not only will it fluoresce when exposed to UV-light but it will temporarily change the colour of the crystal even after exposure to UV.  It will gradually return to its original dull creamy, calcite-like colour over time until re-exposed.  So, if your enigmatic pebble contained hackmenite, then it would have perhaps changed colour from its original appearance when viewed with a regular flashlight. 

Maybe you should have marked its location and drawn a treasure map on weathered parchment (Staples).  Try to make the map look even older by avoiding the use of pixels and place it in an old bottle of rock-gut.  Pretend that you found it washed up on the beach when you reveal your find to the other members of your club.  Let the club members interpret the map and come to their own conclusions and don't feel annoyed when they wrench it from your capable hands.  Let others find the glowing pebble so that their authority remains a convincing illusion.  You then point out to the more obtuse members that being in-charge clouds your judgment and that if they put the chain-of-command on the sand and look more closely that not only does the pebble fluorescence in UV-light and do so with distinction but also that there is a temporary normal-light colour change. Exclaim a discovery of tenebrescence to the amazement of your collaborators, some of whom are already arguing about how to spell it while doing an online search.  While they are behaving frenetically get a nice tight shot of their collective expressions.  It's about then that the director yells "CUT!".  That's a wrap.

How's that for a youtube short?