Earthquake lights, explained about:reader?url=https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/science-an...

nationalgeographic.co.uk

Earthquake lights, explained

Photograph by Mr. Kuribayashi, Reprinted with permission from
Seismological Research Letters

4-5 minutes

When a magnitude 8.1 earthquake struck Mexico in 2017, eerie

images of green and blue lights in the sky popped up on social
media. The so-called Mexico earthquake lights were yet another
mysterious instance of a phenomenon that has been puzzling
experts for hundreds of years.

Like ball lightning, earthquake lights are relatively rare—captivating

but hard for scientists to explain. Complicating matters, the
instances of luminosity around earthquakes don't all look the same,
sparking theories that range from plain old lightning to UFOs and
otherworldly apparitions.

The lights can take "many different shapes, forms, and colors,"
Friedemann Freund, an adjunct professor of physics at San Jose
State University and a senior researcher at NASA's Ames
Research Center, said in a 2014 National Geographic interview.

Earthquake lights in history

Freund and colleagues studied 65 accounts of such lights reaching

as far back as 1600, publishing their findings in Seismological
Research Letters in 2014.

On November 12, 1988, for example, people reported a bright

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purple-pink globe of light along the St. Lawrence River in Quebec,

11 days before a powerful quake. In Pisco, Peru, the lights were
bright flashes that lit up the sky, captured in security camera video
before an 8.0-magnitude quake in 2007. And before a 2009
earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy, four-inch (ten-centimetre) flames of
light were seen flickering above a stone street.

Are they real?

The U.S. Geological Survey is circumspect about whether

earthquake lights, or EQL, really exist. "Geophysicists differ on the
extent to which they think that individual reports of unusual lighting
near the time and epicenter of an earthquake actually represent
EQL," the agency says on its website. "Some doubt that any of the
reports constitute solid evidence for EQL, whereas others think that
at least some reports plausibly correspond to EQL."

Freund is in the latter camp.

What could cause earthquake lights?

Analyzing 65 earthquake light incidents for patterns in the 2014

study, Freund and colleagues theorized that the lights are caused
by electric charges activated in certain types of rocks during
seismic activity, "as if you switched on a battery in the Earth's
crust."

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These earthquake lights in Quebec were recorded in November

1988.

Photograph by Reprinted with permission from Seismological

Research Letters

Basalt and gabbro rocks, for example, have tiny defects in their
crystals that could release electrical charges into the air. The
conditions that lend themselves to the lights exist in less than 0.5
percent of earthquakes worldwide, the scientists estimated, which
would explain why they have been relatively rare. They also noted
that the earthquake lights more commonly appear before or during
quakes, not as much afterward.

An earlier study proposed that tectonic stress created a so-called

piezoelectric effect, in which quartz-bearing rocks produce strong
electric fields when compressed in a certain way. But one of the
complications in studying earthquake lights is, of course, that
they're unpredictable and short-lived. In an attempt to work around
this, some scientists have attempted to recreate the phenomenon
in the lab.
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In a study led by a physicist at New Jersey's Rutgers University and

published in 2014, grains of different materials—flour, plastic disks,
plaster—produced voltage spikes when agitated. The scientists
attributed this effect to friction between the grains, which would
contradict both the piezoelectric theory and Freund's.

As long as conflicting scientific theories emerge, the debate over

causes of earthquake lights stands to remain charged.

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