Monday, August 20, 2007

Earthlights on Peru’s Earthquake?



Following the terrible natural disaster on Peru, which caused hundreds of casualties, some local news agencies are also speaking about reports from locals of flashes of light in the sky both before and after the event.

According to El Comercio from Peru,

“During the night … before and after the stron earthquake, neighbours from the districts of Miraflores, La Molina and Cercado de Lima assured having seen the sky light up because of an unexpected lightning in the middle of the night. Nevertheless, the National Hydrology and Meteorology told El Comercio that it didn’t detect any anomaly in Lima’s skies, and assured that this phenomenon could have been caused by the light of a beacon or some spinning panels that exist in the city”.

Over at MarcianitosVerdes, Luis Ruiz Noguez is receiving and collecting more reports from multiple witnesses who also claim to have seen the lights. Noguez prudently warns that before speculating if the incidents were indeed earthquake lights, the prosaic explanations must be ruled out first.

The video above, posted on Marcianitos, is allegedly of one of the incidents. It was suggested to Noguez, and has been also featured over at this blog, that suggests it’s triboluminescence.

I think the point of light that can be seen in the video along with the flash is from a conventional source (an emergency light), maybe it’s the same point of light that can be seen before the blackout. But the flash of light itself must have been indeed intense, and as there’s no sound along with it, and apparently the local institutions did not report any weather anomaly, it may possibly be the record of an earth light.

For those who don’t know about it, there’s a quick summary about earthlights on Wikipedia. In Spanish, MarcianitosVerdes have in-depth dossiers on the subjects — one of the reasons people looking for more info on Google ended up finding his excellent blog: Las luces de los terremotos.

Update: Marcianitos just posted another video:


Several flashes, including a big one around 40 seconds after the video starts, can be seen over the horizon. Noguez remarks once again that it must be verified if they weren’t explosions from the power transmission lines and transformers.

According to the reports the flashes were not accompanied by any sounds, and some say they originated in the sea. As we all know, light travels a lot faster and farther than sound, so explosions on one place could have been noticed as just lights from far away.

But at first glance, the flashes are so bright that one suspects that if they had conventional causes, then even if the sound was not heard, the causes would be quickly pointed to their origins, as the explosions themselves may have been quite significant, probably injuring or killing people.

There still seems to be much confusion, and the Peruvians need more urgent help and solidarity for their death and injured. Which also doesn’t mean we should ignore the possibility of so many records and reports of what may have been a poorly understood phenomenon associated with earthquakes.

We follow all the news with great interest and hope for the best. Check Marcianitos in Spanish for the latest updates.

UPDATE: Check the latest post on the subject, Earthquake lights or Electrical transformers? The answer seems to be electrical transformers, though there may still have been erthquake lights involved.