At 1:45 a.m. on January 8, 2022, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake occurred in Menyuan County, Qinghai Province, with a depth of 10 kilometers. Judging from the monitoring probe pictures posted by netizens, there were two strong flashes of light in the sky, and then an earthquake occurred, what is this dazzling enough to illuminate the ground? Speaking of the inexplicable flashes of light before the earthquake, there is already precedent. Before the Tangshan earthquake, a train was driving at a speed of 90 kilometers per hour to Guye Station, and the driver found that the night sky suddenly lit up several bright flashes, illuminating the earth and the roof of the house in front of him.
On February 4, 1975, the Haicheng earthquake, Zhou Suqin of the Ancient City Commune, reflected that about 10 minutes before the earthquake, he saw a fiery red fire ball the size of a basketball rising from the ground from the southwest of his line of sight, reflecting the surrounding area like a cloud of fire. Another witness was Ren Changqian, who was on night shift at the time, and he saw multiple fire balls moving close to the ground.
In 1930, before the 7.1 earthquake on the Izu Peninsula in Japan, students who had just finished school saw colored bright lights in the sky, and at nine o'clock in the evening someone reported that there was an orange light in the sky, and some people reported seeing a blue light, and then an earthquake occurred at about 4 a.m. the next day.
There are records of earth light not only in modern times, but also in ancient times. For example, in the "Book of Poetry", it is recorded, "Ye Ye shook electricity, and did not listen to it." Hundreds of rivers boil, mountains collapse. "Ye Ye seismic electricity may be talking about the geo-optical phenomenon that occurred before the earthquake, otherwise there is no other explanation."
To this day, scientific theories have pointed out the mechanism of earthquake occurrence, but the prediction of earthquakes and the interpretation of geo-light are still in the phenomenon stage, and there is no authoritative theory to explain. From the phenomenon point of view, earth light does not only appear in the tens of seconds before the earthquake, but even a few hours ago. And ground light is sometimes not reflected in the sky of the unidentified colored light phenomenon, but also appears on the ground. Earth light appeared not only before and after the earthquake. Earth light has appeared not only on land, but also in the sea, and there are cases of this.
On December 21, 1946, a magnitude 8.1 earthquake occurred in Nankaido, Japan, and at the time of the earthquake, several luminous bodies appeared on the surface of the sea, and these luminous bodies emitted a strong glow, each of which lasted only a few seconds before disappearing.
Scientists have collected these luminous phenomena everywhere, comprehensively compared the topography and geomorphology of various places, and found that most of these phenomena are distributed in areas rich in quartz components. In 1970, Powell and Finkelstein proposed the "piezoelectric effect", that is, the discharge effect of geo-light occurs because of the collision and extrusion of quartz. After the earthquake in the pre-earthquake epicenter, because the effect of stress is greater than any usual time period, the friction and squeezing between the quartz-rich rocks makes the accumulation of electricity, and when the charge density reaches a certain level, the luminescence phenomenon can be seen, and the scale of the discharge is comparable to the discharge on rainy days.
But the piezoelectric effect is not the only mechanism by which earth light occurs, another theory is that the charge in the air produces a vertical displacement, and the temporary uneven electric field produces a luminous phenomenon. In addition, there are many other theories, so there is no authoritative explanation for the mechanism of the occurrence of earth light.
Earthquakes have brought great harm to human society, and it is believed that the increasingly developed scientific theories in the future can accurately predict earthquakes and explain the phenomenon of earth light.