SKEPTOID BLOG:Earthquakes and lights in the skyby Mike Weaver January 7, 2014 It is not uncommon for folks in the skeptical/science community to examine claims of UFOs or aliens based upon sightings of lights in the sky. More often than not, these lights can be explained by normal, misidentified phenomenon such as planets, aircraft, stars, the moon, etc. There are, however, sightings which are not so easily explained. There have been persistent reports of lights seen before earthquakes through the years. Are these sightings legitimate? If so, how are they formed? Let’s take a look after the break. A recent article on smithsonian.com by Joseph Stromberg caught my eye. The article discusses a paper recently published in Seismologic Research Letters regarding lights in the sky and earthquakes. The source paper is behind a pay wall, but the article in the Smithsonian brings us the details. Background information from the Smithsonian article:
Why the lights appear is still a mystery, though there are several hypotheses offered, two of which are[1]:
In a study recently published in Seismological Research Letters of the Seismological Society of America, Robert Thériault lead a team of researchers who attempted to solve the mystery of the earthquake lights via a new method. Thériault and his team gathered information from 65 earthquakes dating from 1600 forward which had reports of earthquake lights. From the article:
The team found that approximately 85 percent of earthquake lights occurred with earthquakes which were not associated with a tectonic plate boundary. The remaining sightings occurred on plate boundaries, however the majority of those were seen when the plates were sliding past each other (a transform fault). They also discovered that the lights appear far more often before or during the quake than afterwards. [1] The team developed a new hypothesis for the earthquake lights in collaboration with Friedemann Freund of San Jose State University. Freund’s model, called the P Hole theory, proposes that the lights are caused by electrical effects in the rocks which can produce ionized oxygen. From the article:
A lot of this is not new, the recent study, however, provides additional support for the P Hole hypothesis. I had not yet read anything about this and found it a fascinating read. It will be interesting to see how it all pans out. Be well by Mike Weaver @Skeptoid Media, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit |