SUBJECT: WHAT DO EARTHQUAKES AND UFOS HAVE IN COMMON?        FILE: UFO2460




Reprinted from Omni Magazine -!- August 1993

                            
                WHAT DO EARTHQUAKES AND UFOS HAVE IN COMMON?
                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 Look! A strange light! Is it a UFO from outer space? No, it's electricity from
the earth.

 John Derr, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Albuquerque, New
Mexico, has determined that the phenomena glimpsed in many UFO sightings may
actually be balls of electricity related to earthquakes. Derr and Michael
Pensinger, a professor at Laurentian University in Ontario, Canada, tapped into
a database of UFO sightings compiled by the Center for UFO Studies and
cross-correlated the sightings with reports of seismic activity. "When we
started looking at it area by area, certain patterns began to emerge," he says.

 For example, residents of New Mexico reported UFO sightings in 1951 and 1952
within 60 miles of the epicenters of three temblors measuring 4 to 5 on the
Richter scale that occurred less than a year later.

 "Earthquake lights" tend to be basketball-sized globes of glowing electricity
generated by crushing rock or changes in ground-water flow related to
underground pressure. They can appear for months before and months after
earthquakes.

 "Sightings that can best be explained as earthquake lights are objects seen at
ground level or objects in the sky that have a discontinuous path," Derr
explains. "Our statistics suggest that eighty percent of such sightings could
be geophysical in origin."

 "There's been a lot of anecdotal information regarding phenomena and
earthquakes, but I haven't seen anything that really documents it very well,"
says Jim Mori, a seismologist with the Geological Survey in Pasadena,
California. "During the June 1992 earthquakes in Los Angeles, there was a lot
of arcing of electrical transformers. Certainly those aren't earthquake lights,
but in some situations, it may provide a good explanation of what people saw. 

 However, in the 1989 San Francisco quake, some electromagnetic waves were
recorded minutes before it started."

     Omni Magazine -!- Don Vaughan



UFO BBS Comment:  Anyone interested in further reading on these geophysical
light phenomena should see the following........

	"Handbook of Unusual Natural Phenomena" W. R. Corliss
	1977...Sourcebook Project

	"Earth Lights Revelation" Paul Devereux
	1989...Sterling Publishing

	"Earth Lights" Paul Devereux
	1982...Turnstone Press

	


**********************************************
* THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
**********************************************