Sorry to burst everyone's bubble... but if you look at the source video you can see that a large neighborhood loses power. Looks like it is just power lines going down or transformers blowing.<p><a href="https://twitter.com/Eyaaaad/status/1700621598456234148" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://twitter.com/Eyaaaad/status/1700621598456234148</a>
This phenomenon is common enough that it has a Wikipedia entry [1].<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light</a>
This phenomena has a few possible explanations:<p>One likely possibility is that power lines are shorting because they've become "guitar strings" and are touching each other while vibrating from the quake.<p>Another interesting possibility is that some of the underground rocks may be exhibiting the piezoelectric effect, generating high voltage electricity when squeezed, and the resulting sparks are observed.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezoelectricity" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezoelectricity</a>
It's not some phenomenon, it's shitty sensationalism from the UK's worst "newspaper". I'm still surprised it didn't go the same was as the news of the world.
The UK would be a better place without media like this including the people who work for them.
The 23:08 timestamp on the video is 3 minutes before the earthquake struck at 23:11 [1]. If we understood this phenomenon well enough to be predictive, it would be much longer than the few seconds that current early warnings [2] provide.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Marrakesh-Safi_earthquake" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Marrakesh-Safi_earthquake</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_Early_Warning_(Japan)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_Early_Warning_(Japa...</a>
From the video it looks like spark from some electric thing blowing up. You can see city lights around that spark going dark right after that flash.<p>I think because earth quake travels as a wave, it might have shaken up that area first causing something to blow up.
1. there is a an electromagnetic connection between the sun and the earth.
2. lightning is constantly equalizing voltage from space to earth.
3. earthquakes are probably <i>caused</i> by electrical imbalances, not the reverse.
4. most everyone here probably will deny 1..3 above and downvote me to oblivion.
5. read Christian Birkeland's biography. Or Hannes Alfven. then come back.
1. there is a an electromagnetic connection between the sun and the earth.
2. lightning is constantly equalizing voltage from space to earth.
3. earthquakes are probably <i>caused</i> by electrical imbalances, not the reverse.
4. most everyone here probably will deny 1..3 above.
5. read Christian Birkeland's biography. Or Hannes Alfven. then come back.
Was just reading about this the other day: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboluminescence" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboluminescence</a><p>To those blaming it in power infra, I have not see any proof if that, especially before the actual shock.
Looks like electric universe to me.<p><a href="https://thehonestscientist.com/electric-universe/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://thehonestscientist.com/electric-universe/</a>
The Sun, like the Express and the Daily Star, are "bat boy" quality UK tabloids and should probably just get blocked from being posted on HN. They were also reporting (incorrectly) that "world war one diseases" were spreading at Burning Man, and there's an article in the Daily Star this morning that alleges the "ancient city of Sodom was blown up by an atomic weapon". These are not reliable sources of information, please help me in preventing them from receiving more ad revenue by not aggregating their junk news. Similarly to the scientific method, sources of information should be appropriately vetted based on past performance.<p>Slightly off topic but I've pondered making a plugin that blocks and removes certain "news" sources of my choice from loading on my browser and showing in news aggregators and search engine results. I can avoid them on my desktop and on HN easily because I see the URL preview, but it's much harder on my phone.<p>Someone below has also pointed out that most of these UK tabloids are noted in the Wikipedia list of potentially unreliable sources <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Potentially_unreliable_sources" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Potentially_unreli...</a>