» Home > In the News

earthquake fire

22 November 2015
Electromagnetism

Paul Devereux wrote a couple of books back in the 1980s on earthquake lights and electro-magnetic discharges associated with earthquakes which had a New Age slant but was an attempt to nudge people out of their inertia in respect of fringe science. He went on to investigate pyschology, psychodelia, and harmonic phenomena (stones that ring like a bell etc). As such, Devereux will always be a little on the sidelines – as his work on earthquake lights proved to be. However, he was innovative and sowed some seeds no doubt, and now we have underground lightning apparently reaching the level of the mainstream (lifted from the fringe). Photographs of earthquake lights have been going the rounds for years – long before Paul Devereux, and reports from survivors of earthquakes go way back into the depths of history. See for example Malalas and his report of the earthquake that destroyed Antioch.

At www.q-mag.org/the-tangible-proof-of-earthquake-lights.html … we have an update on mainstream catching up with the speculative (as these things are all part of the Electric Universe concept). A team from the University of Southern Illinois have taken the phenomena seriously and presented their evidence to the annual conference of European Geosciences this year (2015) in Vienna. Why this was not presented to the GSA conference in the States is left unsaid but it is clear that scientists now have the choice to investigate underground electrical currents as a possible earthquake predictor – as they appear to be a precursor. Part of the presentation involved what is called pseudo-tachylites, stones that originate in the earthquake foci (where fault lines rub against each other ro make the ground above shake). It seems these rocks heat up to something like 1700 degrees C, almost to the point they glow white and melt. After a short period they cool and ugglutinate with a thin layer of glass on the rock surface. The stones on display showed the characteristic vein of glass and in their laboratory analysis they confirmed that an electro-magnetic flow underground probably created the glassy veins. Particles containing iron can be seen to stand in lines and files again suggesting a magnetic field was created by electrical flow that was thousands of  times stronger than in the surrounding rock strata.

The pseudo-tachylites come from deep underground – so the lightning itself was deep underground. This is not heavenly lightning penetrating the top layer of the crust but lightning phenomena generated beneath our feet. Rock is supposed to be largely an insulator, blocking electric currents. Earthquakes appear to shatter the atoms of minerals along the fault zone so that electro-magnetic tension builds up. Eventually an electric current is able to shoot through the fault which becomes visible if and when it reaches the surface. It is somewhat akin an underground thunder storm, a rumble of thunder (the shaking of the rock strata) with the lightning a feature of both storms in the sky and storms inside the earth. This appears to explain the mystery of fire and intense heat seen at ancient sites where earthquakes were suspected of being involved. The old argument that earthquakes cannot create fire (without modern facilities such as gas pipes and ovens and electrical wiring)is itself under fire. Should ancient sites such as Troy and Hattusas, or Ras Shamra, be revisited?

Skip to content