https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONhmQAQ84wc Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Seems to be a rare phenomenon, tentatively attributed to either gaseous anions released from certain types of oxygen-containing rocks when they rupture, or possibly to piezoelectric effects. More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light But what a crap video. Voiceover is synthesised by computer reading of a written article, and cannot translate some of the characters, leading to gobbldegook.
Let me find a better one. I think it's interesting that this phenomenon was not even recognized by science until footage of a recent earthquake in Japan. Maybe I can post that. I also changed that second jpeg I posted. Apparently that's a phenomena due to ice crystals. I reposted another manifestation of earthquake lights instead.
Here's another video. Unfortunately, it's also a robovoice. lol! Sorry! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJJuWL3C25g
Well, it's a good job there are new things coming up or there would be no science left to do. As to it being recognised only recently, that would be what is known as the scientific method at work. In science, observations have to be objectively reproducible before they can be accepted as the basis for science to work on, to develop a testable hypothesis. Science cannot work with anecdote or hearsay. So we often find rare phenomena like this (ball lightning is another example) take ages to gain acceptance, due to their rarity and transience and hence the difficulty of establishing objective evidence about them.
It doesn't require replicability to acknowledge the existence of a phenomenon. It only requires good evidence for it. Which science now has regarding earthquake lights. Turns out the anecdotes were correct, as in fact they often are. People around the world don't repeatedly report the same exact phenomenon by mere chance.
No, you're wrong, I'm afraid, it does require replicability. If all you have is one report of something, then the chance of error or bias is too high for it to be taken as a definite phenomenon. In other words "good evidence" requires more than this. It can in rare cases be a single instance, but if so you need multiple, independent, objective reports of it. And anecdote is never good enough. The crank websites and bookshops are simply full of junk theories based on anecdote. For science, it is well worth missing a few real things for a while, in order to avoid drowning in shit. That discipline is what distinguishes science from superstition, fantasy and fraud.
No. You're wrong. Replicability only explains HOW a phenomena happens. It isn't necessary to confirm the existence of the phenomena itself. Take for example green fireballs near Los Alamos Laboratories in New Mexico. Noone has been able to replicate the phenomena yet, but scientists fully accept the realness of the phenomena based on eyewitness accounts. Ball lightning, will o' wisps, earthquake lights, the northern lights, St. Elmo's fire, the Hessdalen lights, the Marfa lights, and foo fighters are other examples. If science had to wait till it replicated everything, it'd never discover anything. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_fireballs
Quite right, I used the wrong word. I should have spoken of "reproducibility" instead of "replicability".
Same thing: rep·li·cate verb /ˈrepliˌkāt/ 1. make an exact copy of; reproduce. "it might be impractical to replicate eastern culture in the west" synonyms: copy, reproduce, duplicate, recreate, repeat, perform again
