Electric organ (biology) in research because of their resemblance to nerve-muscle junctions. The stack of electrocytes has long been compared to a voltaic pile, and may even have inspired the invention of the battery, since the analogy was already noted by Alessandro Volta. While the electric organ is structurally similar to a battery, its cycle of operation is more like a Marx generator, in that the individual elements are slowly charged in parallel, then suddenly and nearly simultaneously discharged in series to produce a high voltage pulse. To discharge the electrocytes at the correct time, the electric eel uses its pacemaker nucleus, a
Will-o'-the-wisp create ephemeral fires. Furthermore, phosphine produces phosphorus pentoxide as a by-product, which forms phosphoric acid upon contact with water vapor, which can explain "viscous moisture" sometimes described as accompanying ignis fatuus. In 1776, Alessandro Volta first proposed that natural electrical phenomena (like lightning) interacting with methane marsh gas may be the cause of ignis fatuus. This was supported by the British polymath Joseph Priestley in his series of works "Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air" (1772–1790); and by the French physicist Pierre Bertholon de Saint-Lazare in "De l’électricité des météores" (1787). Early critics of the marsh gas hypothesis