
Mysterious electrical bursts warn of material collapse - iProject
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21913-mysterious-electrical-bursts-warn-of-material-collapse.html
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varelse
Why does this remind me of crunching wintergreen lifesavers?

[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/119/why-do-
wintergr...](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/119/why-do-wintergreen-
life-savers-spark-when-crunched)

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rachelbythebay
How about X-rays emitted by adhesive tape when you pull it off glass?

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gms7777
While I do think the phenomena is really cool, the article states how it may
be used to forewarn of earthquakes and bridge collapses. I'm curious how much
benefit could be gained from knowing of an earthquake a few seconds in
advance?

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rosser
Only tangentially related, but IR satellite imagery showed a significant,
clearly discernable spike in temperature immediately above the epicenter of
the Tohoku quake last March, that peaked _three days_ before the quake. That's
a lot more than a few seconds' notice, if it's consistent.

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jofer
I think you're thinking of ionospheric data, rather than IR data.

E.g. <http://www.ep.sci.hokudai.ac.jp/~heki/pdf/2011GL047908.pdf>

I haven't heard of an infra-red-visible precursor of any sort, at any rate,
though I could be very wrong there.

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rosser
First hit on searching (DDG) for "japan earthquake epicenter infrared":

[http://www.technologyreview.com/view/424033/atmosphere-
above...](http://www.technologyreview.com/view/424033/atmosphere-above-japan-
heated-rapidly-before-m9/)

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Mz
I lived in Southern California when there was a fairly large quake, I think
either 7.1 or 7.2. At the time, I had an elaborate bedroom set with a floating
mirror. For several weeks prior to the quake, the floating mirror periodically
rattled. I found it baffling and couldn't figure out what was causing it.
After the quake, it seems fairly obvious that there was some kind of pre-quake
energy release going on. It seems to me there should be some means to predict
that a quake is likely. I just don't know what it would be.

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sneak
<http://jbdeaton.com/2011/how-to-predict-an-earthquake/>

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Mz
If we are going to have a sense of humor about it:

The earthquake in question was one of the least damaging big quakes ever. My
sons slept through it. It was some ungodly middle-of-the-night hour. I was
really freaked out and jumped up from deep sleep to try to figure out what was
going on, realized it was a quake and turned on the bedroom TV. We kept having
aftershocks and I was trying to watch the News. My husband kept trying to
sleep. I finally said "I don't know how you can sleep through this." He
replied "I can't sleep because someone has the TV on."

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artaxerxes
Worm sign!

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nextstep
Maybe this can explain WTC 7.

