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(Frits Westra) URL: http://www.adn.com/life/story/753386p-803392c.html Original Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 05:35:09 -0800 ========================== Forwarded message begins ====================== Quaking lights Scientists drawn to legends of luminous displays that precede temblors By Alberto Enriquez Anchorage Daily News (Published: January 21, 2002) When it comes to earthquakes, the earth doesn't just move. It often roars. It broadcasts at radio frequencies. And if the conditions are right, it even produces a visible glow. So-called "earthquake lights" are nothing new. The Greek historian Thucydides wrote that "immense columns of flame" foretold the destruction of two ancient cities, Helice and Burls, by earthquake. Far across the ancient world, the author of a traditional Japanese haiku recorded: The earth speaks softly to the mountain, Which trembles And lights the sky. What's new is the possibility that scientists may be able to reliably duplicate these extraordinary effects, including earthquake lights or "coronal discharges," under artificial conditions in the lab. Because some earthquake-related effects occur hours and even weeks before the quakes themselves, further research into the nature of the earthquake precursors holds the promise of one day -- no one says this will be soon -- predicting quakes. In a recent issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research, physicist Friedemann Freund theorizes that positive charges can be generated when huge stresses are generated along faults in the Earth's crust. The rocks in the crust normally act as insulators that conduct electrical charges only poorly. But under the severe stress generated before an earthquake, these rocks may behave briefly like "p-type semiconductors" found in computer chips, capable of releasing large numbers of positive charges referred to as "holes." These charges speed upward toward the surface of the Earth at between 220 and 660 mph. Freund, a professor at San Jose State University in California, thinks they ionize the atmosphere upon reaching the air, accounting for the bizarre effects -- radio interference and colored streamers, flashes and glows reported by thousands of observers. Among them: Radio interference reported in the days before the worst quake recorded (magnitude 9.5), in Chile in 1961, as well as Alaska's magnitude 9.2 Good Friday quake in 1964. Thirty-eight luminous displays seen by Quebec residents before, during and after the earthquakes of November 1988. The first photographs of earthquake lights during the Matsushiro "earthquake swarm" in Japan between 1965 and 1967, collected and published by Japanese researcher Yutaka Yasui during a period when thousands of seismic events were being recorded each day. Lights during a Chinese quake in 1976 that reportedly turned night into day near the epicenter and awakened people nearly 200 miles away. Freund's most recent publications detail how he has moved beyond theory and developed an experimental means to generate stresses in rocks, which "can account for earthquake-related electrical signals causing electric discharges and earthquake lights." Duplicating earthquake lights in the lab is important because science deals with reproducible events. Experiments that can't be repeated -- like the "cold fusion" craze a few years back -- soon drop into the dustbin of scientific history. As Freund says, it's tough to do basic research while waiting for the Earth "to repeat the experiment." Earthquake-light research remained beyond the pale of Western science throughout the 1970s, classed by some as largely anecdotal even after the publication of Yasui's extraordinary photo collection. U.S. research continued largely along conventional seismological lines. By 1986, however, seismologist John Derr described in the scientific journal Nature experiments by Brian Brady and Glen Rowell of the U.S. Bureau of Mines in which they broke rocks in darkness. As the rocks broke, the men detected light that did not have the characteristic spectrum of the minerals in the rock, but of the air. The observations suggested that something given off by the breaking of the rocks ionized the air. Derr, who has put forward an alternative theory of earthquake lights based on hydrological effects, also mentioned Freund's then-purely theoretical work based on semiconducting effects. Though science was slow to recognize earthquake lights for what they are, Derr thinks accounts of them are more common in history and prehistory than generally appreciated but often were interpreted as spiritual experiences, ghosts or unidentified flying objects. Among the candidates: On the Alaska Peninsula, a brilliant glow often seen in the mountains south of Lake Iliamna and visible up to 45 miles away, described by Native peoples as the work of ghosts. Floating lights seen on the sacred mountain of Wu T'ai Shan in China, interpreted by Buddhists as a manifestation of a saint. Around A.D. 33, a report of luminous figures, at the time of an earthquake, in the crucifixion passage of the Gospel of Matthew, 28:51-53: "The earth shook, and the rocks were split and the bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised and seen coming out of tombs." Reports of an egg-cup- shaped thing chasing a car and of a UFO buzzing a fishing boat, both in Australia, two days before a series of earthquakes. Despite mounting documentation of luminous and electromagnetic phenomena associated with quakes, resistance to scientific study of these events as signs of impending earthquakes remained strong. As recently as 1998, prominent American seismologist Wallace Campbell editorialized against a United Nations grant to Chinese researchers who published a guide to forecasting earthquakes based on geomagnetics. Thrashing numerous misunderstandings and errors in the Chinese researchers' work, Campbell concluded that the manual was "pseudoscientific nonsense" that raised false hopes in the public. In the gloves-off world of scientific debate, Freund fired back his own public riposte in the EOS Forum newsletter. While acknowledging the limitations of the Chinese researchers, Freund blasted Campbell for using "innuendoes to discredit the interdisciplinary search for the subtle signals by which the Earth may divulge an impending disaster." The entire blistering exchange can be found at www.globalwatch.org/ungp/ http://EOS_98.htm and http://www.globalwatch.org/ungp/friedemann98.htm Such candor hasn't always brought Freund friends, but two years after the debate he says he remains more confident than ever. As he puts it, "I have told people that they have overlooked something fundamental, and people don't like to be told this!" Publication in the prestigious and rigorously peer-reviewed Journal of Geophysical Research may signal a pending scientific groundswell in Freund's favor. The Japanese and Taiwan-ese long ago committed millions to research, including the installation of sensor networks. Have Freund's ideas gone mainstream? "I wouldn't go that far, just looking at my success rate getting funding," he says. "In four years, I've had one small grant of $10,000 out of NASA." Journal of Geophysical Research reviewer Malcom Heggie of the University of Sussex in England writes of Freund: "His work is adventurous and may or may not be correct, but the ideas he has, the concepts he explores and the careful work he puts into them deserve attention." Derr, chief of the Global Seismograph Network, at the U.S. Geological Survey laboratory in Albuquerque, said Freund's proposed semiconducting theory "looks like an important paper." And among the converts to the newly emerging field of "seismoelectromagnetics" is professor Masashi Hayakawa, who heads one of two large research projects funded by the Japanese government. "I was also a newcomer in this field -- I am here 10 years," Hayakawa writes. "Because I thought this field was not a science the scientists who published papers on (seismoelectromagnetics) were not so qualified." Since that time, he says, Japanese researchers have confirmed seismic effects not only in the Earth's crust, but to the atmosphere's highest reaches, the ionosphere. Hayakawa thinks those "seismic effects" may be propagated by very low-frequency radio emissions from the Earth, consistent with Freund's theory of the emission of positive charges. He plans to invite Freund to Japan to address the International Union on Radio Science in August. Earthquake light effects are less pronounced at transverse faults like the San Andreas in California, where plates mainly rub alongside each other. Nevertheless, before the 1906 San Francisco quake, a "flickering haze" appeared over the ground. Earthquake lights are much more pronounced near the far more dangerous thrust faults, such as those that occur in Alaska -- where 51 percent of all U.S. quakes occur -- and in Japan. In May 1978, residents of Homer awoke to a "false sunrise" over the western side the Cook Inlet -- several hours before the real sunrise. About that time, Anchorage bush pilot Sumner Putnam reported to the Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys that he saw greenish-white flashes in Nondalton that coincided with bursts of static on his plane's radio. State seismologists report no current research in Alaska on earthquake lights or the prediction of quakes. Daily News reporter Alberto Enriquez can be reached at aenriquez@... or at 1-907-257-4328. _________________________________________________________________ Copyright © 2002 The Anchorage Daily News ========================== Forwarded message ends ========================