Geologists Claim Earthlights are Real—Speculate on the cause and if they can be used in earthquake predictions



By Dr. Greg Little


In the January/February 2014 (85/1) issue of “Seismological Research Letters” geologists Robert Thériault, France St-Laurent, Friedemann Freund, and John Derr published a 19-page article entitled “Prevalance of earthquake lights associated with rift environments.” The article began by examining the Irish engineer Robert Mallet’s series of articles on earthquake lights published from 1851 to 1855. Mallet documented anomalous light reports from 1606 B.C. to 1842. The authors of the new paper examined the reports from 39 modern, large earthquakes that occurred in 20 different regions and in 6 continents. They concluded that the lights are real—a fact that was documented by Japanese scientists as early as 1961.

One of the earthquake locations cited in the new report is the New Madrid zone. In Andrew Collins 2012 book Lightquest, I wrote an extensive Introduction that detailed a long-running “UFO” investigation in the new Madrid, Missouri area. From 1967 to 1981 a team of scientists led by a university physicist conducted field studies on UFO manifestations as they were actually occurring in the region. The study concluded that the lights being observed were plasmas perhaps produced by tectonic forces releasing electrical discharges. However, they concluded that some of the lights appeared to be guided or actually had intelligence. There were 32 field observations made by the scientific team where the lights responded to the human observers.

The 2014 publication found that 97 percent of earthquake lights appear at fault lines near continental plates. They can occur before earthquakes, during earthquakes, or at virtually any other time due to pressure on rock formations that cause electrical discharges to occur. Piezoelectricity is one possible cause of the lights. The authors also speculated that earthquake lights might be useful as a tool to predict earthquakes.

The authors took care to keep distance between their speculations and UFO-related ideas. However, there is substantial evidence that when humans are physically close to such light manifestations they report bizarre experiences. Collins book Lightquest examines those experiences.