
Bizarre Earthquake Lights Finally Explained - kposehn
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140106-earthquake-lights-earthquake-prediction-geology-science/
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eloff
If these can be triggered so far in advance of a quake, couldn't we bury
instruments of some kind that also trigger under those conditions? That would
be useful regardless what types of rocks are in the area.

It might not be perfect, but anything is better than the no warning we have
now.

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th0ma5
I remember various ways of aurora detection but all of them depend more or
less of precise wavelengths being observed and doing some noise filtering and
amplification. It sounds here that various manifestations are possible so
hopefully a method could be found, but it could be complex.

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semi-extrinsic
We do have pretty good aurora forecasting though, through satellites upstream
in the solar wind. There are even smartphone apps for that, I'll plug this one
that a friend of mine was involved in:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.unis.Aurora...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.unis.Auroral_Forecast)

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JungleGymSam
> For example, cameras caught clear images of earthquake lights in Pisco,
> Peru, in August 2007, during a magnitude 8 earthquake there.

Oh, yeah? Too bad we don't have the technology to share such images.

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zzleeper
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj2PQ3onAL0#t=40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj2PQ3onAL0#t=40)
Most of the cameras in this video were aimed towards the sea

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mapt
Color me skeptical. Power lines and transformers which arc as they are pulled
apart by vibration make a hell of a lot more sense to me.

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crorella
Having experienced the 6th largest earthquake ever recorded by a seismograph
[1] I can assure you the lights I saw during that night were a lot brighter
and higher in the sky, so power lines and transformers are ruled out. I was
living fairly close to the epicenter (about 18 miles from the picture you can
see in the wikipedia) and the lights were up for several minutes after the
electricity went out.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Chile_earthquake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Chile_earthquake)

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mapt
Clouds reflect light. Arcing can be extremely bright to night-adjusted eyes.

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Johnythree
The article says that it's not caused by Piezo effects, then goes on to
describe exactly that.

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beambot
Actually, it sounds a lot more like triboluminescence to me.

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msandford
I would suspect that those are actually the same thing.

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8ig8
This pilot has a first-person account and eerie photos of what may be
earthquake lights:

[http://www.pbase.com/flying_dutchman/pacific_eruption](http://www.pbase.com/flying_dutchman/pacific_eruption)

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ars
An electrical discharge does not explain the color. To be a complete
explanation it needs to explain the color of the lights.

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jacquesm
Gas emission from the ground prior to earthquakes?

There has been some work to attempt to link the two.

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halfcat
_> Freund says common forms of earthquake lights include bluish flames that
appear to come out of the ground at ankle height; orbs of light called ball
lightning that float in the air for tens of seconds or even minutes_

Perhaps coincidental and unrelated, but similar orbs have been reported in
conjunction with crop circle events.

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sumedh
I though crop circles were made by people who had to much time on their hands.

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reitanqild
I'm also inclined to believe that. Only one problem: in addition to crop
circles that can easily be attributed to humans there are some that has been
really hard to pin down it seems. (Because of the product of precision and
timing etc.)

I think it could be interesting if someone would watch those places with
drones and IR etc but until it is thoroughly explained I'd admit that we
expect to be able to explain it but at the moment we don't know.

Edit:remove hyperbole (be more than happy -> think it could be interesting )

