[HN Gopher] 'Blue lights' flash in sky moments before Morocco ea...
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'Blue lights' flash in sky moments before Morocco earthquake
Author : svenfaw
Score : 132 points
Date : 2023-09-12 17:08 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thesun.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thesun.co.uk)
| anonymousiam wrote:
| This phenomena has a few possible explanations:
|
| One likely possibility is that power lines are shorting because
| they've become "guitar strings" and are touching each other while
| vibrating from the quake.
|
| Another interesting possibility is that some of the underground
| rocks may be exhibiting the piezoelectric effect, generating high
| voltage electricity when squeezed, and the resulting sparks are
| observed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezoelectricity
| finikytou wrote:
| a weapon is also a possible explanation until proven false.
|
| US government already experienced with weather and climate and
| even in SF fog where they were successful spreading pathogens.
| why isnt something that could be considered?
| [deleted]
| jjulius wrote:
| >One likely possibility is that power lines are shorting
| because they've become "guitar strings" and are touching each
| other while vibrating from the quake.
|
| From the article, emphasis mine:
|
| >The intriguing bursts of light were captured on CCTV at a home
| in Agadir _approximately three minutes before the disaster_.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| I was wondering how well synchronized the camera clock is
| with the clock used to establish event timing in picking the
| earthquake arrivals.
|
| There are several seconds between my smart watch time and the
| network time displayed on my workstation. There are several
| minutes between those two times which I consider accurate and
| the time displayed on the battery powered clock on the wall.
| There are hours between those times and the time displayed on
| my coffee-maker.
|
| Where does the camera get its time stamp?
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Are you suggesting that the lights recorded in the video
| are actually happening during the earthquake? Wouldn't it
| be easy to tell when the earthquake occured due to camera
| shaking?
| dylan604 wrote:
| The link in this comment[0] shows the camera shaking well
| before the lights are flashing. Also, you can see the
| arcs of electricity in the flashes. Lightning is purple
| not bluish. Human made electrical systems make the bluish
| color. The flashes do not start until ~20s into the 39s
| video. How are we even coming close to these being
| "before" the earthquake?
|
| [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37485077
| orwin wrote:
| 3 minutes before the seism hit agadir, or three minutes
| before the seism happened? Because light is way faster than
| seismic waves.
| burnte wrote:
| Yeah, the article was pretty clear about it, it was
| absolutely before the quake hit the surface by a significant
| margin. Fascinating.
| seiferteric wrote:
| Then why does there appear to be an entire block whose lights
| go out at about 10 seconds into the video (about in the
| center)?
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Yeah, the fact that they've often been observed immediately
| prior to a rupture makes me think piezoelectric effect.
| xattt wrote:
| Not to be a clever clogs about it, but the same pattern of blue
| flashes are often seen in significant freezing rain conditions
| when transformers or wires flash over.
|
| I believe the possibility of a piezoelectric effect, but the
| specific blue colour is what makes me think of a power lines
| versus fracturing rocks.
|
| You can see that sections of the grid flicker in line with the
| transformers shorting out.
|
| However, there is a distinct short white flash at the 12 second
| mark, before the longer blue flashes start which I would
| presume has a different cause.
| namenottaken1 wrote:
| I think that the "specific blue color" you see is explained
| with the composition of the atmosphere (nitrogen and oxygen
| mostly). The origin of such phenomenon won't change the
| colors (as long as it doesn't contribute with another
| elements).
| [deleted]
| foreverobama wrote:
| [dead]
| bodelecta wrote:
| It's not some phenomenon, it's shitty sensationalism from the
| UK's worst "newspaper". I'm still surprised it didn't go the same
| was as the news of the world. The UK would be a better place
| without media like this including the people who work for them.
| [deleted]
| chasing wrote:
| "In sky" is a weird way to describe something that's clearly "on
| the ground."
| sgt wrote:
| Is this related to ball lightning? My mother witnessed that once
| - a glowing ball slowly moving through the kitchen.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| That might have been a tab of acid or some special mushrooms
| added to the rice.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Ball lighting will never cease to fascinate me.
|
| The deniers vehemently deny, and outright insult people's
| experiences.
|
| The people who say they've experienced will be adamant that
| they have.
|
| Honestly, I hope it's real and we find a way to replicate it
| only because it's so cool.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| It seems like they're is a lot of things that polarize like
| that. Like near death experiences. People say that their
| death experience of reality was so much more real than
| ours, like when we wake from a normal dream and intuitively
| know we are in reality. That our everyday reality is just a
| simple simulation compared to true reality.
|
| To them it is completely obvious and real. That this life
| is a mere shadow, a simulation. Nothing will convince them
| otherwise.
|
| But we (general public without that experience) can't
| possibly believe it, come up with many theories on what the
| brain is doing.
|
| I've never experienced ball lightning but I can believe the
| ones who have most of the time.
|
| Death experiences, I can't even imagine something more real
| than my current reality, how could I possibly start to
| believe it? Despite how obvious it is to those who went
| through it, it's impossible for me to even begin imagining
| something like that.
| jmstfv wrote:
| That's akin to a psychedelic experience: _that_ reality
| feels more real than the everyday reality we live in,
| which, in comparison, comes across as quite shallow.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| I've never tried that, maybe I'd have to before I could
| ever understand how someone could feel like it's more
| real.
|
| I've avoided psychedelics because all I have is my brain,
| and I'm scared I could screw something up in my mind. I
| kinda want to keep my mind safe, it's all I am. Losing
| the consistency of my mind that I've always known is
| scary.
| pxc wrote:
| > I've avoided psychedelics because all I have is my
| brain, and I'm scared I could screw something up in my
| mind. I kinda want to keep my mind safe, it's all I am.
| Losing the consistency of my mind that I've always known
| is scary.
|
| Psychedelics probably won't permanently screw you up. On
| the most common ones, like psilocybin mushrooms or LSD,
| you may even still feel very much yourself while
| tripping.
|
| That said, if this is your attitude about psychedelics,
| they would probably be a bad time for you. It's one of
| those things where the more you stiffen up and brace
| yourself, the scarier and more uncomfortable the changes
| in your perception that come with tripping will seem to
| you. You definitely want to approach them with more
| openness and curiosity, and if you don't feel like that's
| available to you with respect to psychedelics, opting out
| of them is a totally sound choice.
| wredue wrote:
| Lots of people are also adamant that spirit overcomes them
| and causes an episode of speaking in tongues. We have quite
| a few instances of this and other religious experiences,
| none of which passes any sort of scrutiny.
|
| There are more cameras pointed all over the place than
| ever, and somehow there has never been a recording of this
| phenomena, despite the Wikipedia claiming upwards of 5% of
| people having experienced this?
|
| Nah.
| solumunus wrote:
| [flagged]
| slim wrote:
| it is not https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning
| wredue wrote:
| I mean. It's literally just people claiming they saw a
| light, even according to the Wikipedia.
| kyledrake wrote:
| The Sun, like the Express and the Daily Star, are "bat boy"
| quality UK tabloids and should probably just get blocked from
| being posted on HN. They were also reporting (incorrectly) that
| "world war one diseases" were spreading at Burning Man, and
| there's an article in the Daily Star this morning that alleges
| the "ancient city of Sodom was blown up by an atomic weapon".
| These are not reliable sources of information, please help me in
| preventing them from receiving more ad revenue by not aggregating
| their junk news. Similarly to the scientific method, sources of
| information should be appropriately vetted based on past
| performance.
|
| Slightly off topic but I've pondered making a plugin that blocks
| and removes certain "news" sources of my choice from loading on
| my browser and showing in news aggregators and search engine
| results. I can avoid them on my desktop and on HN easily because
| I see the URL preview, but it's much harder on my phone.
|
| Someone below has also pointed out that most of these UK tabloids
| are noted in the Wikipedia list of potentially unreliable sources
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Potentially_unreli...
| mcpackieh wrote:
| > _The Sun [...] were also reporting (incorrectly) that Ebola
| was spreading at Burning Man_
|
| Can you substantiate this claim? I'm searching for such an
| article from The Sun and can't find anything. I have found
| numerous stories about the burning man ebola hoax, but none of
| them say The Sun participated in it.
|
| I'm not saying you're lying, but maybe you fell for some _fake
| news about fake news_. I found this Reuters article about a
| faked screenshot of a Forbes article, purporting to show Forbes
| spread the hoax (they didn 't):
| https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-burning-man-forbes...
| kyledrake wrote:
| They may have removed the text, regardless I removed the
| reference to it in my comment. They also alleged that people
| were getting "trench foot", or as they described it at the
| time, "a world war one disease".
|
| I was at Burning Man during the rain/mud, went bare foot for
| a few days, did not get "trench foot", nor did anyone else I
| knew there. Their unbelievably trashy reporting during that
| (everybody is fighting and getting trench warfare diseases,
| etc) is one of the reasons I'm unusually motivated to comment
| on their reliability as a source of information today.
| dathinab wrote:
| If anyone cares: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_foot
|
| but be warned not so nice pictures
|
| Also known as:
|
| > immersion foot syndrome[6] and as a nonfreezing cold
| injury (NFCI)
|
| quote of cause:
|
| > It can occur in temperatures up to 16 degC (61 degF) and
| within as little as 13 hours. Exposure to these
| environmental conditions causes deterioration and
| destruction of the capillaries and leads to damage of the
| surrounding flesh.[7] Excessive sweating (hyperhidrosis)
| has long been regarded as a contributory cause. Unsanitary,
| cold, and wet conditions can also cause trench foot.[8]
|
| Idk. how warm it was there, but looking at other clothes
| worn probably not ~<16C, additionally even if the mud is
| that cold as long as you take brakes to warm up your feed
| e.g. in the mid day sun and don't walk through the night it
| still would be very unlikely. Then not having to walk in
| the same wet boots you have been wearing (wet) since weeks
| also helps.
|
| And even if some one got NFCI it likely was only a case
| which comparable with what people had in WW1 was quite
| harmless. I.e. not really what people think about when
| mentioning trench foot (and knowing what it's about).
|
| So all in all misleading and in a very intentional and
| knowing manner.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| I am not sure, many times in front of The Onion1 I get the
| drive "I should post this on HN".
|
| Maybe we could have a parallel twin site for non serious
| "news"?
|
| Edit: 1or other sources mixed with the serious ones: for
| example, the pages from Andy Borowitz on The NewYorker. This
| just came out in real time...
| https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-calls-...
| shaoonb wrote:
| I remember a while back there was a Twitter account called
| "Hacker News Onion". My favourite headline: Developer accused
| of unreadable code refuses to comment.
| geocrasher wrote:
| Maybe we could have a parallel twin site for non serious
| "news"?
|
| https://fark.com
|
| Yep, it's still around
| all2 wrote:
| > "ancient city of Sodom was blown up by an atomic weapon"
|
| This is hyperbole at best. Sodom and Gomorrah have been
| confirmed to have experienced a "heat event" that caused
| pottery to exhibit the same chemical glazing that happens in a
| nuclear blast. Note that a nuke is not required for this form
| of glazing to appear, just very high temperatures.
|
| See https://youtu.be/SDiYb20iAsM for an informal discussion.
|
| I guess a partial truth is easier to sell than a complete
| fabrication.
| [deleted]
| mnd999 wrote:
| Wikipedia has such a list of sources it considers reliable and
| unreliable, and The Sun is very much in the unreliable
| category.
| kyledrake wrote:
| Could you post the link? I would actually love to have this
| as a resource.
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Potentially_unrel
| i...
|
| Didn't know about this page either!
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _Wikipedia has such a list of sources it considers reliable
| and unreliable_
|
| Russell suggests to check where Wikipedia ranks in that list.
|
| Well, the "credibility discrimination problem" is much easier
| on some sources (the "Rockstar ate my Hamster" headlines
| runners for example).
| jimjimjim wrote:
| > "Rockstar ate my Hamster" I remember playing that on the
| amiga
| junon wrote:
| Despite that being true, "earthquake lights" are a real
| phenomenon and do indeed have varied theories with no proven
| explanation. They have been captured and documented, etc.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| I've always gone for "sudden stressing of rock causing
| piezoelectric effect on a rather large scale that ionises
| gases in the atmosphere" as my Just So story of why.
| all2 wrote:
| The earth has massive electrical fields running in it. I
| wouldn't be surprised if some kind of electrical discharge
| occurred between the ground and sky during an even that
| breaks conduction of said currents.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Probably because the vast majority of people on the internet
| don't know anything about British newspapers or their quality.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| I'd like to have a survey done, "What would you associate to
| the expression 'Page 3'".
| Sharlin wrote:
| I'd say The Sun and Daily Mail are (in)famous enough that
| knowing their worthlessness is essentially media criticism
| 101. Certainly on a site like HN where the participants
| aren't "the vast majority of people on the internet".
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| > media criticism 101
|
| You have to understand that this is (likely purposefully on
| both sides) not compulsory or well-attended. Hell, it
| really should be a grade 9 required class but that would
| make it harder to lie to future constituents. Can't have
| that. Same with law and various other essential life skills
| like drivers ed which are conspicuosly absent from general
| curricula.
| stevev wrote:
| Poor suggestion based on articles that you disagree with and
| how it was presented. I don't understand why people jump to
| censorship as a solution to their own biases.
|
| If you read the article, they're only reporting on the light.
| No explanation was given. Are you now denying it never happened
| or that you just don't like the outlet; since they're two
| different things.
| kyledrake wrote:
| You think a user's ability to have a choice in where their
| content comes from is censorship? Do you think the block
| feature on Twitter is censorship as well?
|
| HN is not an "everything goes" platform, it has specific
| guidelines and policies designed to drive a higher quality
| conversation and higher quality sources of information, which
| is one of the reasons it stands out as a good aggregator for
| me. And I'm of the opinion that UK tabloid spam doesn't meet
| the criteria, not because of their political bent (I don't
| know what it is *), but because of their consistently wobbly
| and expedient relationship with the truth when it happens to
| be incompatible with their business model.
|
| * I'm guessing faux conservative, since at least one of them
| is owned by Rupert Murdoch, same owner of the famously high
| quality Fox News who just lost a high profile $787.5 million
| defamation lawsuit for false reporting on voting machines.
| the_af wrote:
| > _" bat boy" quality_
|
| Was bat boy an invention of Weekly World News? If so, WWW was
| satirical, with intentionally bizarre made-up stories. People
| were supposed to read it for the comedy, but I guess a version
| of Poe's Law applies and some people took it seriously. I
| remember one article of WWW claimed Saddam Hussein was hiding
| in a submarine in an American lake -- and I _bet_ some people
| believed this.
|
| The Sun I imagine pretends to be a serious newspaper though.
| glitchc wrote:
| > submarine in a lake
|
| Made me spill my coffee!
| the_af wrote:
| Well, I couldn't find the submarine cover, but this will
| SHOCK you... the _actual_ Iraqi weapons of mass
| destruction:
|
| https://weeklyworldnewsvault.tumblr.com/post/130026803238/c
| o...
|
| Warning: that site has plenty more WWW covers, you may lose
| a good chunk of your time perusing them.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| With the targeted aside:
|
| > _Get your career diploma at home!_
|
| Edit: made even more special after the subsequent one:
|
| > _More hair!! Style it fast! With Wild Growth(r) Hair
| Oil_
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > Get your career diploma at home!
|
| Is it much different than getting a "diploma" drum
| prerecorded videos?
| jeffwass wrote:
| I had some fun back in College in the 90's cutting out
| articles from Weekly World News and tacking them to the
| bulletin board just outside the physics library. This board
| was full of cutouts of interesting _real_ science articles,
| regularly thumbtacked by the librarians.
|
| One example WWW headline was something like "Scientists
| discover black hole the size of a head of a pin in the Nevada
| desert."
| kromem wrote:
| Actually, there was more to it than satire and comedy.
|
| WWN was made into what it was by the same guy as was behind
| the creation of the National Enquirer as a tabloid - Gene
| Pope.
|
| A graduate of MIT in just 3 years, when he bought up the
| Enquirer he'd been employed in the CIA's psychological
| warfare department immediately prior.
|
| This was in 1952, the same year the CIA and other military
| groups met to discuss the increase in UFO sightings (like the
| ones making front page news over Washington DC that same
| year), and started project Blue Book.
|
| Suddenly Gene Pope buys up a struggling periodical, turns it
| into a tabloid putting stories of UFO sightings next to
| sightings of Elvis being alive. This was expanded in 1979 to
| the WWN, where the paired stories became even more outrageous
| (Bat Boy).
|
| For decades the mere mention of UFOs was typically associated
| with tin foil hats, and was the result of a likely
| intentional domestic propaganda effort that took on legs of
| its own as successful tabloids in their own right.
| watersb wrote:
| > _This was in 1952... sightings of Elvis being alive._
|
| Remarkably, rumors of Elvis being alive persisted until
| 1977!
| kimixa wrote:
| To this day the term "UFO" tends to be related to "Alien
| Flying Saucers", rather than "Exaggerated reports of
| military testing", which seems to be the most related facts
| we know decades later.
| mc32 wrote:
| I think despite the bizarre and made up stories on occasion
| the national enquirer has actually dug up some good scoops.
| Not often... but it's surprising!
|
| Here are some of the choicest scoops:
| https://www.ranker.com/list/national-enquirer-real-
| news/evan...
|
| I think they also outed several celebrities over the years
| back when it was taboo.
| labrador wrote:
| I come from a poor working class area so believe me people
| didn't get the comedy. It was an early version of "muh space
| lasers started the Maui fire"
| labrador wrote:
| I'm not saying all poor working class people are ignorant
| and gullible. I'm saying there's a minority who are
| uneducated and conspiratorial minded.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| > ancient city of Sodom
|
| God, I can't even. People are in desperate need of media
| literacy classes.
|
| Also, what non-right wing conservative person is baited by that
| headline? Its so fing transparent to whom they are appealing.
| 7952 wrote:
| Those kind of storys are not written seriously and tend to be
| a bit satirical. They are mocking the "boffins" who do this
| kind of research. They don't expect the reader to believe a
| word of it.
| thrownaway561 wrote:
| Its' just a transformer blowing up.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| This was my first guess though I have to wonder what the
| weather was just before the quake and how this camera is
| oriented relative to the quake epicenter.
|
| It has the same intensity of a transformer shorting out and the
| color is very similar but it also looks like local lightning
| strikes along a line of storms.
|
| As a geophysicist, I am in the crowd that believes that
| earthquake lights are a real phenomena related to the
| earthquake and they may eventually be utilized as a predictive
| tool. The technology is not mature enough to be able to
| understand their method of generation and the sensor network
| that would be necessary to use them as a predictive tool is too
| sparsely distributed.
|
| I wonder whether every earthquake has a spectral signature but
| the only ones we are able to see directly are those that dip
| deeply enough into the blue end of the spectrum to fall within
| the limits of our own vision.
|
| Perhaps a UV detector array deployed in an active region could
| help us understand whether we miss these signals because we
| can't see them unless the quake is powerful enough to cause a
| wide-bandwidth event that bleeds into the visible spectrum.
| This may also help explain why some animals that can see UV or
| spectral components outside our own visual limits are disturbed
| before earthquakes. Maybe they can see these signals and the
| combination of seeing these signals and feeling ground motion
| precursors could trigger the animal behavior that has been
| observed globally.
|
| I think this is an interesting problem that requires further
| study.
| gennarro wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light
|
| First recorded incident was in the year 869
| elpool2 wrote:
| Yeah but _this_ video is clearly just transformers blowing. A
| block of street lights goes out the exact same time as one of
| the flashes.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| [flagged]
| Giorgi wrote:
| well autobots are at least 65 million years old!
| peteradio wrote:
| Autobots are only 4 thousand years old since God created
| earth etc and the autobots.
| [deleted]
| jnxx wrote:
| That's entirely possible, as speeds are about several thousand
| meters per second, and differ significantly between several
| types of waves:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_wave
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| macinjosh wrote:
| Why does it blow up _before_ the quake?
| 0xDEF wrote:
| Maybe the quake caused the arching powerlines in the distance
| before the quake reached the location of the camera?
| genter wrote:
| It takes time for the earthquake to propagate, much slower
| than the speed of light.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Earthquake lights have been reported minutes, hours, even
| days before the quake, and also after them. It's not
| transformers blowing up, although that also happens and can
| also light up the sky. The light seems to somehow be caused
| by massive increases or releases of stress in crystalline
| bedrock, possibly piezoelectrically in quartz, or similar
| mechanisms.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| There was a paper posted here on HBO that claimed some
| correlation between cosmic waves and seismic activity. At
| face value correlation was very strong.
|
| One feature was the asynchronicity - one of the variables
| had to be lagged, I can't remember which one.
|
| Not sure what to make it but possibly related to lights
| in the sky.
| Anechoic wrote:
| It could be in response to the p-wave, which arrives before
| the higher-amplitude shear wave.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| [flagged]
| twic wrote:
| More likely to be a scalar electromagnetic weapon of some
| sort, a Tesla howitzer etc.
| dsego wrote:
| The archons demand sacrifice, that's why somewhere in the
| world always has to be pain and suffering.
| hackerfactor1 wrote:
| Triboluminescence? Could it be the quake breaking light-emitting
| crystals?
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Which rocks or minerals fluoresce in the ultraviolet to near
| ultraviolet end of the spectrum? I'd have to look that up but
| it could help understand the origin of the lights that are
| observed which can't be tied to infrastructure issues, weather,
| etc.
| revscat wrote:
| This phenomenon is common enough that it has a Wikipedia entry
| [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light
| uoaei wrote:
| Wow, some of the examples on YouTube are quite spectacular.
| Here's an example that shows the peculiar blue color pretty
| well.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjqxiSxhNCw
| wackget wrote:
| 50% of that video is waiting for something to happen.
| fredoliveira wrote:
| It is a 39 second video. You'll live to see it in its
| entirety.
| randomdata wrote:
| How is that not transformer explosions?
|
| It looks exactly the same to my eye.
| https://youtu.be/q1_ZtCXLnes
| jrockway wrote:
| I think these are just electrical infrastructure shorting
| out. It's pretty obvious for the ones that occur at ground
| level on the horizon. The cloud lighting up blue is something
| obscured at ground level but reflected by the clouds.
|
| Similar effect as "power flashes" from tornadoes; tornado
| blows on power lines, power lines short out, blue arc is
| produced, everything is bright blue for miles for a bit.
| dekhn wrote:
| Without commenting on this specific set of videos, it is
| already generally considered established that there are
| bright sky flashes before earthquakes that are not related
| to electrical infrastructure, but rather, natural in
| origin.
| hadlock wrote:
| Yeah we would see these in Texas during snow storms. That
| blue green flash is typical for transformers. I took a
| video many years ago (with a consumer grade camera, which
| were terrible back then, especially in low light), you can
| see the flash just after the 1:50 mark
|
| https://youtu.be/UXf2N1iQ0Wc?si=d6QwBqqY9j1xl_7R&t=109
| Aachen wrote:
| How do you know that's transformers? And doesn't this
| shut them down / why is it so regular that you knew to
| start filming?
| hadlock wrote:
| You see them blow during thunderstorms driving down the
| highway or across a bridge. Dallas gets an alarming
| amount of thunder during the summer as squall lines sweep
| across the state every week or two. I would imagine this
| was a cascade failure. I was reading a book of watching a
| movie and saw them out of the corner of my eye and
| finally decided to start filming.
| dboreham wrote:
| Possible. A few years ago a 33KV line came down onto the
| interstate near me, very early in the morning as I was
| heading out onto the road a couple of miles away and over a
| hill. From my viewpoint it looked like an alien abduction
| scene. In fact that was my best guess until I crested the
| hill and started to understand what had happened.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I've never seen a high voltage line come down, but I did
| see a residential neighborhood distribution line start
| arcing.
|
| The color and sound were unlike anything I've ever seen
| or heard.
|
| From memory, something like a blue'd lightning bolt
| without thunder + the sound of 100 giant hornets shifted
| down in frequency.
|
| If you've ever seen welding light in person, imagine that
| intensified a couple orders of magnitude.
| Aachen wrote:
| The wind makes that it probably doesn't come across as as
| loud as it was, but something like this?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNaIChPiiww&t=11
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Yup! That's missing some of the low frequencies I
| remember, but captures the mid-high. I guess "incredibly
| loud sheet of paper tearing" would have been another
| description.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Sounds like it'd be intense enough to illuminate the base
| of low clouds at night, which would explain (most of?)
| what seems to be visible in that video.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I don't think there was electrical infrastructure in 869
| CE.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| [flagged]
| jscottnz wrote:
| Wow. I was watching this, then looked at the title... what
| the?! I live there!
| dylan604 wrote:
| Except, aren't these occurring during/after the shaking, not
| moments before. It really hurts my brain to try to even get
| to the level of thinking some people can just accept as
| a-okay
| beepbopboopp wrote:
| This is crazy. I vividly remember being a child during the
| 1994 Northridge Earthquake (Los Angeles) and driving with my
| father (who had to pick me up from a friends) and seeing the
| sky more of a flashing fuschia color.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| Common enough but it still lacks an explanation. They don't
| know what causes these flashes.
|
| That is the point.
| mholt wrote:
| Why are these flashes definitely not transformer stations or
| similar? Seems like an obvious answer from my armchair at
| least. Earthquake wave travels from epicenter to camera, and
| on its way it shorts out power infrastructure.
| skymast wrote:
| [dead]
| nicechianti wrote:
| [dead]
| JoblessWonder wrote:
| Sorry to burst everyone's bubble... but if you look at the source
| video you can see that a large neighborhood loses power. Looks
| like it is just power lines going down or transformers blowing.
|
| https://twitter.com/Eyaaaad/status/1700621598456234148
| xwdv wrote:
| You bursted very few bubbles. Most people here would have
| already guessed the "blue lights" were just transformers.
| JoblessWonder wrote:
| I'm going to be honest... I was slightly concerned with the
| amount of people who seemed to think it was legit.
| bawolff wrote:
| I mean,i still wonder whats up with the other examples
| people have linked. There were no electrical transformers
| 1100 years ago.
| xwdv wrote:
| Just piezoelectric effect.
| [deleted]
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| runeofdoom wrote:
| Oh, sure, give us the boring, mundane explanation that makes
| sense. What's next? Claiming that sprites, and elves (and
| probably even Steve) aren't real either?
|
| /s
| doublerabbit wrote:
| well, they were real the last time I took DMT.
| sbate1987 wrote:
| [dead]
| divbzero wrote:
| The 23:08 timestamp on the video is 3 minutes before the
| earthquake struck at 23:11 [1]. If we understood this phenomenon
| well enough to be predictive, it would be much longer than the
| few seconds that current early warnings [2] provide.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Marrakesh-Safi_earthquake
|
| [2]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_Early_Warning_(Japa...
| netsharc wrote:
| But how accurate is this device's timestamp? Even with NTP,
| there could be a lot of skew if it only syncs once in a while
| and has a bad internal clock otherwise.
|
| The font of the timestamp/label is familiar though, so it's
| probably a cheap Chinese device, and I'd guess they're so
| widely used that they've managed to make the clock to be quite
| accurate.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Do you suspect that the time was wrong and the footage shown
| was actually shot _during_ the 6.8 earthquake? Wouldn 't the
| camera shaking make it clear when the earthquake was
| happening?
| jnxx wrote:
| Just a note, there are warning that the earthquake is used to
| spread disinformation.
| drewda wrote:
| From a New York Times article yesterday about a different
| natural disaster (the wildfire in Maui):
|
| > Natural disasters have often been the focus of disinformation
| campaigns, allowing bad actors to exploit emotions to accuse
| governments of shortcomings, either in preparation or in
| response. The goal can be to undermine trust in specific
| policies, like U.S. support for Ukraine, or more generally to
| sow internal discord. By suggesting the United States was
| testing or using secret weapons against its own citizens,
| China's effort also seemed intended to depict the country as a
| reckless, militaristic power.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/us/politics/china-disinfo...
| glonq wrote:
| I have a friend who claims that the Maui wildfires were fake.
| I intend on slapping my friend upside his stupid head next
| time I see him.
| 738362628 wrote:
| You don't need bad actors for a disinfo campaign. There's a
| certain type of person in a natural disaster that just loses
| their head and starts making shit up on social media, and
| they're fairly common. I've seen it a few times now and it's
| crazy. They'll make things up that could jepordize people's
| lives for the likes, I guess.
|
| Also, having seen FEMA at work first hand, they are
| approximately useless. I could see a lot of anger happening
| organically.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _certain type of person in a natural disaster that just
| loses their head and starts making shit up on social media_
|
| They're the "everything happens for a reason" types. Their
| belief system doesn't properly integrate chance events, so
| when confronted with one, they create a bogeyman. Because
| _somebody_ being in control, even a bad somebody, is more
| comprehensible than nobody being at the wheel.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| There are also just those who actually always had kooky
| beliefs, but normally they weren't relevant so even their
| acquaintances didn't know, but after a disaster they feel
| they're obligated to help, which manifests in them
| espousing their kooky beliefs on social media.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Well that's very ironic comong from the NYT, lol.
| macinjosh wrote:
| [flagged]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _FEMA giving victims in Maui a measly $700 while other
| parts of the US federal government spend billions upon
| billions to fund not only the war in Ukraine_
|
| You're comparing cash handouts to military aid. (Also, the
| $700 figure is incomplete [1].)
|
| [1] https://www.fema.gov/node/fema-only-giving-hawaii-
| wildfire-s...
| charonn0 wrote:
| https://www.fema.gov/node/fema-only-giving-hawaii-
| wildfire-s...
| notwhereyouare wrote:
| >WASHINGTON -- One week since President Biden declared a
| major disaster declaration for the state of Hawaii in the
| wake of the devastating wildfires, the Biden-Harris
| Administration and voluntary agencies provided survivors
| with immediate needs such as food, water and shelter and
| approved millions of dollars in disaster relief. To date,
| FEMA has approved more than $3.8 million in assistance to
| 1,640 households including more than $1.57 million in
| initial rental assistance.
|
| https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20230817/biden-harris-
| adm... should probably do a bit of research. That $700 is
| the initial instant money somebody is allowed to collect
| through FEMA, and then they can apply for more
| frumper wrote:
| Or you could just continue reading what you quoted.
|
| > By suggesting the United States was testing or using
| secret weapons against its own citizens
| matonias wrote:
| A little rapid but a warning is there.. so to seem!
| smusamashah wrote:
| From the video it looks like spark from some electric thing
| blowing up. You can see city lights around that spark going dark
| right after that flash.
|
| I think because earth quake travels as a wave, it might have
| shaken up that area first causing something to blow up.
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