Bizarre Natural Phenomena Vol.30 - The Fireworks Of Enceladus (Earthquake Lights)

We discussed earthquakes the past week, so today I wanted to show you another quake related, unexplained phenomenon: Earthquake lights.

There have been reportings of colorful lights in the sky, similar to a combination of auroras and lightning, moments before, during or after an earthquake. The most recent report was that of the Mexico earthquake last September (7th September 2017). A shake of an about 8 magnitude scale was accompanied by bright green and blue flashes.

(Image source: pixabay.com)

Now, if you believe in aliens, you'd say that their extraterrestrial technology induces disasters and those lights was their alien-magic spell-advanced technology that wreaked havoc across our planet. If you don't, on the other hand, read on...

A full description

Earthquake lights were first described scientifically in 1910 by Ignazio Galli (priest and naturalist from Italy). He categorized them according to duration and shape. Related to great magnitude earthquakes, they appear as white or blue lights or even yellowish and in the shape of a ball, but there have been reports of a wider color spectrum too. They can last several moments in levels as high as about 200 meters from the ground.

According to when they appear, they are categorized as: a) preseismic: they can be seen closer to to the epicenter from moments up to weeks before the mainshock, and b) coseismic: They can be seen near or much farther than the epicenter as the seismic wavetrain comes along (the S waves in particular).

The explanation

There are few theories concerning the origin of earthquake lights. One (and maybe the correct one) supports that they can be caused due to the ionization of oxygen (O-) in specific rocks because of the stress before or during an earthquake. As the anions are released they travel all the way to the surface through the cracks, ionizing pockets of air and turning it into glowing plasma (basically simple electric discharges). Lab tests have come to validate this idea.

Another hypothesis involves piezoelectricity. In grounds rich in quartz, the stress in the tectonic plates creates voltages as the plates rub on each other. The phenomenon is related to triboluminescence, the release of light during the breaking of bonds through rubbing, scratching or crushing. The result is a colored electric discharge.

(Image source - author, Matthias Zepper - license)

All in all, the general consensus is that earthquake lights must be generated by the voltage that is "born" as rocks rub against each other. This voltage later finds its way to the surface, and the electric discharge is viewed as a luminescent beam, ball or spike.

Debunking the Mexico lights

According to a member of the metabunk.org forum, the night of the Mexico earthquake, those lights were nothing more than the reflection on the clouds of power lines exploding (transformer explosion due to the sudden increase in the electric charge along the line). The various colors were caused by the different elements in the atmosphere where the electrical explosions happened. 

Since reports don't seem to offer a consistent pattern, we should question whether any light in the sky before, during or after an earthquake falls in the earthquake lights category. City lights, power lines, electromagnetism or piezoelectricity, one thing is for sure that before you blame aliens try to pick up all the evidence, put the pieces of the puzzle together and then reach a conclusion that fits the time and place you're looking into.

(Meme generated via makeameme.org image database)

References

nationalgeographic.com
wikipedia.org
forbes.com_1 - forbes.com_2
washingtonpost.com

Thank you for stopping by and giving this post a read. I hope you enjoyed it! If it got your curiosity-radar on, you can check some of the previous articles on this series:
25 - Moeraki Boulders
26 - Psychedelic Swamp
27 - Supercell Storms
28 - Northern Lights
29 - Light Pillars

If you please, feel free to pay a visit to my blog and check out my short stories along with plenty of educational posts and of course lots of doses of troll-teaching!    

Special thanks and mentions go to:

Until my next post,
Steem on and keep smiling, people!