Mysterious electrical bursts warn of material collapse | Hacker News Reader

Mysterious electrical bursts warn of material collapse

newscientist.com

65 pointsiProject19 comments

Why does this remind me of crunching wintergreen lifesavers?

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/119/why-do-wintergr...

How about X-rays emitted by adhesive tape when you pull it off glass?

While I do think the phenomena is really cool, the article states how it may be used to forewarn of earthquakes and bridge collapses. I'm curious how much benefit could be gained from knowing of an earthquake a few seconds in advance?

A few seconds could shut down reactors, gas lines, slow trains, trigger stop-lights (e.g. preceding tunnels), alarm people in parking decks, etc.

Earthquakes are known to sometimes be preceded by unexplained balls of light much further in advance. If this phenomenon is related, the warning period likely exceeds just a few seconds.

Actually, there's a few seconds (depending on distance from the epicenter) warning already. Body waves ("P" and "S" waves) travel through the earth at a greater speed than surface waves (which are what actually cause damage).

Japan's high-speed rail lines are already programmed to shut down when a significant earthquake is (automatically) detected from body-wave arrivals.

Of course, this only helps if you're not very close to the epicenter of the earthquake.

Also, not to be too pedantic, but "earthquake lightning" has only been reliably documented after or during earthquake rupture. It is a weird and apparently real phenomenon, though.

Only tangentially related, but IR satellite imagery showed a significant, clearly discernable spike in temperature immediately above the epicenter of the Tohoku quake last March, that peaked three days before the quake. That's a lot more than a few seconds' notice, if it's consistent.

I think you're thinking of ionospheric data, rather than IR data.

E.g. http://www.ep.sci.hokudai.ac.jp/~heki/pdf/2011GL047908.pdf

I haven't heard of an infra-red-visible precursor of any sort, at any rate, though I could be very wrong there.

First hit on searching (DDG) for "japan earthquake epicenter infrared":

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/424033/atmosphere-above...

HAARP

</tinfoil>

I would love 5 seconds to get further away from a chimney or what have you.

I lived in Southern California when there was a fairly large quake, I think either 7.1 or 7.2. At the time, I had an elaborate bedroom set with a floating mirror. For several weeks prior to the quake, the floating mirror periodically rattled. I found it baffling and couldn't figure out what was causing it. After the quake, it seems fairly obvious that there was some kind of pre-quake energy release going on. It seems to me there should be some means to predict that a quake is likely. I just don't know what it would be.

http://jbdeaton.com/2011/how-to-predict-an-earthquake/

If we are going to have a sense of humor about it:

The earthquake in question was one of the least damaging big quakes ever. My sons slept through it. It was some ungodly middle-of-the-night hour. I was really freaked out and jumped up from deep sleep to try to figure out what was going on, realized it was a quake and turned on the bedroom TV. We kept having aftershocks and I was trying to watch the News. My husband kept trying to sleep. I finally said "I don't know how you can sleep through this." He replied "I can't sleep because someone has the TV on."

Perhaps a truck drove by every time you saw the mirror rattle?

Not likely. It did not recur any other time in the 2.75 years I lived there. It was an isolated military base in the Mojave Desert. I lived on a cul-de-sac with limited traffic. We didn't even have a mailman driving into the cul-de-sac because we had locked mailboxes at the entrance to the cul-de-sac. The master bedroom was on the second floor. Etc.

Interesting. I apologize if the previous comment wasn taken as snarky as that wasn't my intention.

No, not at all. Let me go back and upvote it as a "thanks" for giving me the opportunity to expand on my point.

Worm sign!

Maybe this can explain WTC 7.

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