First Came A Quake In Mexico, Then Strange Blue Lights. People Feared The Apocalypse:
Mexicans are sharing spectacular videos of bursts of blue lights seen streaking across the skies as a strong earthquake rocked the country's Pacific coast city of Acapulco on Wednesday.
The 7.0 magnitude quake struck some 11 miles northeast of the resort city in the southwestern state of Guerrero. At least one person was killed, buildings were damaged and rockslides littered a major highway, but the temblor didn't cause widespread damage. It did rattle nerves though.
The earthquake could be felt some 200 miles away in Mexico City and lasted nearly a minute. Residents fled into the streets as buildings swayed, sidewalks undulated and the blue lights burst brilliantly in the sky.
[...] Rutgers University physicist Troy Shinbrot says not to worry — the blue lights are not a sign of the world coming to an end. [...] In an interview with NPR, he said the phenomenon of so-called earthquake lights has been recorded historically and occurs fairly regularly.
Some scientists believe the eruption of light, or luminosity, is caused by the friction of rock near Earth's crust, which releases energy into the atmosphere. The flash of light is produced near the planet's surface.
Shinbrot has tried to re-create the phenomenon in his lab and says he has measured voltage changes similar to what happens when Earth's crust slips in an earthquake.
[...] There's disagreement about what actually causes the flashes. The U.S. Geological Survey makes that clear on its website, stating, "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."
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Friday September 10 2021, @07:25PM (4 children)
My google-fu fails me, but I remember reading that they recreated ball lightning in a lab about... maybe about four or five years ago? It does take a very rare set of circumstances to create, but it's an actual phenomenon and not a hallucination.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Friday September 10 2021, @07:37PM
Ok, not what I remember (as my memory usually sucks), but here are a couple of links. This one [phys.org] is from 2006 and it was created above water by an underwater discharge. This one [bbc.com] is from 2013. An interesting quote from Dr. Lindsay says "I need to be honest: we're not sure that this is the same phenomenon as ball lightning." This article [aps.org] talks about scientifically analyzing real ball lightning during a thunderstorm.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 10 2021, @11:34PM (2 children)
My understanding of the "data" such as it is, is that physical ball lightning is a real but exceptionally rare event, while the hallucinatory ball lightning is somewhat more common.
When I saw a small glowing white ball appear on our bookshelf, not the shelf where the equipment all fried but the next one up where my attention was focused, my wife saw a similar car sized glowing white ball in the yard, where her attention was focused.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Saturday September 11 2021, @05:36AM (1 child)
Huh. I hadn't heard that. That is very interesting. And your anecdotal experience is also very interesting. Thank you for sharing. I'll have to go look more about this part of ball lightening.
(Score: 1) by Splodgy Emoji on Saturday September 11 2021, @02:09PM
You should also look into the opposite but much rarer phenomenon of ball darkening about which hardly anything has ever been written.