Why Some Earthquakes Produce Strange Lights
Some earthquakes are linked to strange lights, from flashes to glowing orbs, but scientists still debate the cause, including rock-generated electricity and power-grid flashes.
Details
Earthquake lights are unusual flashes, glows, streaks, or orb-like lights reported before, during, or after some earthquakes. The phenomenon has been described for centuries and has become easier to document with modern cameras, but scientists still do not have one confirmed explanation. Proposed ideas include electrical effects created when rocks are heavily stressed or fractured, piezoelectric effects in certain minerals, friction-related light production, and other ways seismic activity could create electrical charges or ionize nearby air. At the same time, not every bright flash seen during an earthquake is necessarily an earthquake light. Damaged transformers, arcing power lines, lightning, and other ordinary sources can produce similar effects. That makes the phenomenon difficult to study because researchers must separate genuine seismic-related light from coincidental or human-made flashes. Some observations have been reported immediately before shaking, but earthquake lights are not a reliable way to predict earthquakes. The most interesting part of the mystery is not whether unusual lights have been reported, but which reports reflect a genuine natural process and what physical mechanism could produce them.
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