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Earthquake lights linked to rift zones : Nature News & Comment

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Earthquake lights linked to rift zones

Steep geological faults most likely to host strange luminescence. Alexandra Witze 02 January 2014

Marco Equizi/Flickr/Getty Images

Earthquake lights were reported shortly before a devastating quake struck L'Aquila, Italy, in 2009.

A new catalogue of earthquake lights mysterious glows sometimes reported before or during seismic shaking finds that they happen most often in geological rift environments, where the ground is pulling apart. The work is the latest to tackle the enigmatic lights, which have been described by eyewitnesses for centuries but are yet to be fully explained by scientists1, 2, 3. The study, published in the January/February issue of Seismological Research Letters 4, pulls together several strands of research to propose a mechanism by which earthquake lights form. The authors suggest that, during an earthquake, the stress of rocks grinding against each other generates electric charges, which travel upwards along the nearly vertical geological faults that are common in rift zones. When the charges reach Earth's surface and interact with the atmosphere, they create a glow.
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Earthquake lights linked to rift zones : Nature News & Comment

Earthquake lights are a real phenomenon theyre not UFOs, says lead author Robert Thriault, a geologist at Quebecs Ministry of Natural Resources in Quebec City, Canada. They can be scientifically explained. On the fringe One of the problems in studying earthquake lights is that legitimate reports become entangled with fringe science. Some witnesses improbably describe flames and smoke spurting out of the ground; others mention glowing clouds that could be an aurora, or streaks of heavenly fire that could be meteors.

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But some reports cannot be easily explained away, says John Ebel, a geophysicist at Boston College in Massachusetts. In 1727, for instance, a New England man walking his dog one October evening felt the ground start to shake and watched a ball of light roll onto the animal, which yelped. Were all interested in finding out more about earthquake lights, says Ebel, who was not involved in the new study. Its just not a regular area of scientific inquiry, because theres no way to do an experiment on them. Thriaults team decided to compile all the reliable reports they could find, from the year 1600 to today. They focused on 27 earthquakes from the Americas and 38 from Europe, and sorted through many bizarre tales. Off the Peruvian coast in August 2007, a fisherman reported the sky turning violet a few minutes before the sea began shaking. Near Ebingen, Germany, in November 1911, a woman reported seeing glows that moved along the ground like snakes as a quake began. Of the 65 earthquakes studied, 56 occurred along an active or ancient rift zone. And 63 of the 65 quakes took place where the geological faults that ruptured were almost vertical as opposed to the shallower angles that many major faults take. This steep geometry could explain how earthquake lights appear, Thriault and his colleagues say. Team member Friedemann Freund, a mineral physicist at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, suspects it all starts with defects in a rock, where oxygen atoms inside a minerals chemical structure are missing an electron. When the stress of an earthquake hits the rock, it breaks chemical bonds involved in these defects, creating holes of positive electrical charge. These 'p holes' flow can vertically through the fault to the surface, triggering strong local electric fields that can generate light. Big squeeze Laboratory experiments have shown that electric fields can be generated in certain types of rock by squeezing5. But Freunds idea is just one of many possible mechanisms to explain earthquake lights. It
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Earthquake lights linked to rift zones : Nature News & Comment

makes enough sense, but that doesnt mean that its right, Ebel says. The catalogue opens up other ideas for studying earthquake lights, says Thriault. For instance, seismologists who monitor active faults might look for changes in the soils electrical conductivity immediately before or during a quake. More generally, spreading the word about earthquake lights could raise awareness about them as a possible quake warning, says Thriault. The phenomenon has alerted people before: near LAquila, Italy, in April 2009, a man saw white flashes reflecting off his kitchen furniture in the early hours of the morning and took his family outside to safety6. Two hours later, a devastating earthquake struck. Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2014.14455

References
1. Lockner, D. A., Johnston, M. J. S. & Byerlee, J. D. Nature 302, 2833 (1983). Show context 2. Derr, J. S. Nature 321, 470471 (1986). Show context 3. Ouellet, M. Nature 348, 492 (1990). Show context 4. Thriault, R., St-Laurent, F., Freund, F. T. & Derr, J. S. Seismol. Res. Lett. http://dx.doi.org/10.1785/0220130059 (2014). Show context 5. Freund, F. T. et al. J. Atmos. Solar Terr. Phys. 71, 18241834 (2009). Show context 6. Fidani, C. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. 10, 967978 (2010). Show context Article ISI Article ChemPort ISI Article ISI Article ISI Article ISI

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4 comments
John Vidale 2014-01-06 06:41 PM

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It is not true that seismologists in the US and Japan, who nearly uniformly disbelieve the theory of "p-hole" earthquake precursors, are behind the times.

Alberto Enriquez 2014-01-04 04:33 AM

Frankly, it would be absurd to try to explain away this phenomena in the purely classical mechanical terms of seismology. The underlying phenomena is best understood by a straightforward application of solid solution chemistry and solid state physics to the lithosphere. No one in either of those disciplines would be shocked to hear that positive hole currents transmitted through solid rock have been thoroughly demonstrated in the lab. Positive holes aka defect electrons are pretty much old hat to those who have designed and built the basic technology underlying our electronic civilization. It is only in geology, and especially seismology, where resistance to these ideas has persisted, so much to the detriment of scientific advance, for the past 30 years. A careful read of this article would suggest that no one is proposing that EQL be relied upon to forecast all quakes because the unique geological conditions underlying these regions obtains in less than 0.5 percent of earthquakes. It does not follow, however, that where EQL do occur, the public should simply ignore them. Lives were saved at L'Aquila because one man spotted such lights and moved his family outside. Fortunately, those who do understand positive hole effectsof which co-author Dr. Friedemann Freund is the foremost lab bench experimentalist and theoretician in the worldare developing a number of electromagnetic techniques which can and will forecast quakes with as much as two week's lead time. It is significant to understand that this is NOT a simple piezo crystal phenomena as with quartz. Piezo can create sparks, it cannot generate the "battery effect" of sustained positive hole currents. The time has passed when seismologists (chiefly in the USA) can dismiss the advances of a field they simply do not understand. They will either make common causeor find themselves increasingly left behind as the research proceeds apace in China, Taiwan, Russia, India, Japan, Turkey, France and England. Regrettable as the rejectionist attitudes of a few entrenched within the USGS hierarchy have been, many even within the rank and file of that organization have long been chafing to throw off the official blinders. As one Indian seismologist told me YEARS ago, "We do not understand this American attitude. because here, we are eager to have these new information that electromagnetics are bringing us. We all want to understand quakes better."

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Earthquake lights linked to rift zones : Nature News & Comment

John Vidale 2014-01-03 12:29 AM

It may not be clear from this interesting article, but among seismologists, the strong consensus is that earthquake lights have only been (occasionally) documented at the time of strong shaking, not before. Further, our understanding of the small duration and spatial extent of earthquake nucleation makes it very unlikely that earthquake lights should be present before an earthquake starts. Hence, any talk of investigating earthquake lights to predict earthquakes is premature at best.

Uncle Al 2014-01-02 07:31 PM

Obtain two quartz pebbles to cobbles (generally milky white). Dark adjust your eyes, then hit them together. More often than not, they flash.

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