Can Electric Signals In Earth's Atmosphere Predict Earthquakes? (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes with interesting news about a possible new avenue for earthquake prediction. Sciencemag reports: "Ask seismologists when they'll be able to predict earthquakes, and the answer is generally: sometime between the distant future and never. Although there have been some promising leads over the years, the history of earthquake forecasting is littered with false starts and pseudoscience. However, some scientists think that Earth's crust may give hints before it ruptures, in the form of electromagnetic anomalies in the ground and atmosphere that occur minutes to days before an earthquake. Now, researchers are sharing their evolving understanding of these phenomena—and how they might be used to predict deadly quakes."

Comments

Can any headline ending in ? be answered with no?

[StikyPad]

Yes.

Re:Not Bloody Likely

[The-Ixian]

Well. That is what I was thinking too. But in TFA they reference a couple of occurrences which appear to already be known:

lights just prior to earthquakes

and

[...] the reported tendency for compass needles to dance around.

So, it sounds like electrical activity is something that is sometimes known to happen just prior to an earthquake.

Weird that now there is all of a sudden an "aha!" moment.

Italy will jail Scientists for failing to use this

[Joe_Dragon]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

Re:Can electric signals in Earth's atmosphere pred

[Dan East]

The mechanism by which stresses in rocks produce electric fields.

Alex, what is piezoelectricity?

Re:Can any headline ending in ? be answered with n

[avandesande]

Perhaps we can trick Betteridge.... "Electric Signals In Earth's Atmosphere Predict Earthquakes, false or true?"

piezoelectric effect

[supernova87a]

This has long been known, and as usual not super new news.

Even in 1975 ("Haicheng Earthquake" ), schoolchildren who had been given electrical measurement kits began to detect unusual fluctuations in ground voltage. This earthquake is one of the few that have reasonably legitimately been claimed to have been predicted on the order of days in advance, with significant population lives saved by concrete action beforehand (could be fortuitous coincidence, but they definitely saw the warning signs -- and note that this earthquake is one of the many documented where animals foretold the earthquake through unusual activity).

There have also been reports of the atmosphere turning purple/blue around the location of an impending earthquake, which is probably what led to the work here. What is new is some more consistent effort to try to detect the precursors.

My uninformed interpretation of the phenomenon is that geophysical / piezoelectric stress in the rocks induces voltages/currents in the ground, which in turn cause atmospheric electrical effects that can be detected.

Re:Not Bloody Likely

[mikael]

Electric currents are known to travel underground. There's also the piezoelectric effect where crystals put under strain can generate electric currents and thus magnetic fields. Combine that with rock being heated under pressure then snapping due to the earthquake, then it's not to hard to imagine that magnetic field lines would be reconnecting in the way that solar flares do.

Re:Not Bloody Likely

[mmell]

Oh, like a lie detector for the Earth!

We all know how reliable those are.

Re:Italy will jail Scientists for failing to use t

[ctrl-alt-canc]

Thank you for posting this. I have been considering getting back into ham radio after quitting it years ago, but given the stuff they are doing, for sure I will keep myself miles away from that!