11 ms·

California Earthquakes Disrupted HF Propagation on West Coast

218 points by sciurus 7y ago

ljoshua 7y ago
Most interesting is that interference began before the earthquakes hit. Is that already a datapoint that is being used in earthquake predictions?
- TallGuyShort 7y ago
  That is interesting... My first guess upon seeing the headline was that the earthquake could have caused some key point-to-point microwave links to be misaligned. But no - for those not reading the full article - it's actually an electromagnetic field caused by the earthquake being propagated up into the atmosphere...
- Raphmedia 7y ago
  Take with a grain of salt. This is pseudoscience at best. There were some reports of earthquake lights[1][2][3] and earthquake clouds[4][5][6] recently. There's some online communities dedicated to those, e.g. https://quakewatch.net/predictioncenter/ https://quakewatch.net/predictioncenter/ ___ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light [2] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/men-film-glowing-snake-like-16506345 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/men-film-glowing-sn... [3] https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/789760/Colorado-UFO-plunge-sky-speed-off-mystery-green-plasma-video https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/789760/Colorado-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_cloud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_cloud [5] https://weather.com/vertical/video/strange-clouds-seen-in-co-2 https://weather.com/vertical/video/strange-clouds-seen-in-co... [6] https://www.denverpost.com/2019/06/20/boulder-rare-helix-cloud/ https://www.denverpost.com/2019/06/20/boulder-rare-helix-clo... Edit: I mean accurate forecasting and prediction using this data is pseudoscience.
  - moftz 7y ago
    What does that cloud formation have to do with earthquakes? That cloud was filmed in Boulder, not anywhere near southern California. The light thing seems pretty neat and there looks to be a bunch of possible explanations for the source. Although some of the videos I watched looked more like flashes of electricity coming from powerlines snapping or transformers blowing which could definitely happen if the earth was shifting.
    - Raphmedia 7y ago
      I'm just the messenger, I have not spent any time researching the details of those claims. There's some overlapping between some online communities I participate in and the doomsday preppers/tracker community so that's why I stumbled on this. The Wikipedia page for Earthquake Lights talks about lights as far as 740 km from the epicenter, so I'd bet that's the answer people who associate those with the quakes will tell you. As I said take it with a grain of salt.
    - zamalek 7y ago
      > What does that cloud formation have to do with earthquakes? Last I read about the alleged phenomena, you're supposedly looking for straight line or ripple clouds that form in seconds. The explanation is that some mechanism (originally friction) is boiling groundwater; but proponents can no longer agree on what mechanism leads to formation of the clouds.
      - harshreality 7y ago
        Why would earthquakes cause a significant amount of groundwater to boil? Supposing there were enough water vapor to do that, how would boiling groundwater form clouds at all, much less in seconds? There's still a lot of earth in the way between the fault and the sky. Ground shaking does not mean that energy is converted into heat. Does the ground feel hot after an earthquake? Warm at all? Earthquakes, right? Not volcanoes or magma chambers? If this phenomenon were real, wouldn't you expect it to occur right before a volcanic eruption, which actually involves large amounts of magma, near the surface, which could actually vaporize large amounts of groundwater? As far as I can tell, that doesn't happen either. The water vapor erupts with the molten rock, and mainly condenses into volcanic clouds because it has volcanic particles to condense around, not because the water vapor itself is enough to form clouds on its own before dissipating.
- birdman3131 7y ago
  As I read the article it is possible to notice them after the fact but difficult to tell the difference between them and the normal changes as you go from day to night thus making prediction dicey at best.
- phonethrowaway 7y ago
  You mean like this? http://ericpdollard.com/2014/06/23/the-landers-facility-of-eric-dollard-and-walter-deroche/ http://ericpdollard.com/2014/06/23/the-landers-facility-of-e...
- maratumba 7y ago
  Seismologist here. So far, no reliable predictor of main shocks (largest earthquake in a sequence) has been found. People have been looking for them ever since the invention of the modern seismometer networks in the 60s. Most of the EM based earthquake prediction is based on really loose reasoning. In summary, it goes like this: "earthquakes can generate EM fields through piezo-electric effect, therefore small movements before big earthquakes should generate small EM fields we can measure". But there is almost never no such thing as "small movements before big earthquakes", which is why reliably predicting them has been impossible so far. Most likely, this will turn out to be an example of confirmation bias. In the unlikely event that it is not, people will be all over this.
  - jofer 7y ago
    To be fair, there are some well documented EM precursors. The most classic is from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/GL017i009p01465%4010.1002/%28ISSN%291944-8007.LOMAPRIE1 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/GL01... Recently, some fairly convincing ionospheric-related (i.e. GPS delay) precursors have also been observed before Tohoku and (less convincingly) several other major earthquakes. (e.g. Heki, 2011, Iwata & Umeno 2016, and several other references I forget. Mostly from the same couple research groups.) We don't have a full mechanism to explain them (or, rather, there are a lot of competing mechanisms that don't fully explain things). More importantly, precursors don't seem to occur consistently as you noted. However, they're also not worth automatically dismissing. The idea that they're all a simple case of confirmation bias has been extensively discussed, and while it's not currently possible to refute, it's starting to seem less likely. There's certainly been a lot more attention given to possible precursors and mechanisms in the last 5 years than there were before. It's a serious avenue of research right now. Keep an eye out then next time you're at AGU. I guarantee you you'll see at least a few posters around possible precursors and/or precursor mechanisms. Forecasting is definitely pseudoscience, but EM-related precursors are a fairly hot (and controversial) research topic at the moment.
    - bsder 7y ago
      > Forecasting is definitely pseudoscience, but EM-related precursors are a fairly hot (and controversial) research topic at the moment. It's not pseudoscience because it can be disproven--which is generally what happens. The issue that everybody forgets is that predictions have FOUR outcomes, not two. You have the one everybody remembers: "I predicted X and X happened". You have the one some people remember: "I didn't predict X and X didn't happen." You have the one that people rarely remember: "I predicted X and X didn't happen." You have the one nobody remembers: "I didn't predict X, but X happened." The problem is that for rare events, the "predict X and not X" and "didn't predict X but X" have to be REALLY low probability for a measure to be useful.
gregcrv 7y ago
It’s probably related to the earthquake light phenomenon. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light
- RIMR 7y ago
  How can it "probably" be related to something that almost certainly doesn't actually exist?
  - gregcrv 7y ago
    Because if you read the above comments, changes in the ionosphere caused by earthquakes are scientifically proven. Ionization of the ionosphere is also what causes auroras. Triboluminescence as another hypothesis is also proven, you can try in your kitchen with sugar!
  - vokep 7y ago
    probably because it similarly doesn't actually exist (or whatever form of it does exist has nothing to do with predicting earthquakes)
supernova87a 7y ago
It's surprising to read about, but not implausible. You put that much stress on crystalline material over miles and who knows, you could get piezoelectric kinds of effects creating huge EM fields.
hnitbanalns 7y ago
Would this explain the bee deaths during the last several days?
runeks 7y ago
What’s HF?
- pizza 7y ago
  High frequency radio band
  - bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
    Also known by the public as "shortwave radio" (although only a part of the HF spectrum is used for commercial broadcasting, but HF and shortwave is essentially used interchangeably).
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- abruzzi 7y ago
  generally defined as 3mhz to 30mhz.
  - i_am_proteus 7y ago
    Yes! For those not familiar with radio, HF (high frequency) is a frequency range that's higher than what's used for AM broadcast and lower than FM broadcast. Much lower than frequencies used in WiFi and cell phones. What makes it interesting here is that it's a frequency range that is commonly-used and that also propagates in modes other than line-of-sight. For instance 'groundwave' propagation curves around the Earth because of induced currents in the Earth. This allows HF communication over the horizon. Enthusiasts are regularly able to make contact between continents with amplifier power of less than 5 Watts.
    - packet_nerd 7y ago
      I think groundwave propagation only happens reliably at the extreme low end of the HF spectrum, and is mostly associated with medium and long waves (160m ham band & AM radio for example). For most of the HF spectrum reflections off the ionosphere are the main useful propagation mode. At the short end (like CB radio) bouncing of the ionosphere is harder so line-of-sight is more common.
pwlb 7y ago
intresting article about the phenomenom: http://www.ep.sci.hokudai.ac.jp/~heki/pdf/Scientific_American_Vance2018.pdf http://www.ep.sci.hokudai.ac.jp/~heki/pdf/Scientific_America...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
blondie9x 7y ago
I'm not following does this mean the Earthquakes are connected in Vancouver and Los Angeles?
- Wohlf 7y ago
  Both are on the edge of the north american plate, where it meets the pacific plate. Everything on the edge of the pacific plate is referred to as the "ring of fire" due to frequency of earthquakes.
  - kwk1 7y ago
    ... due to the prevalence of volcanoes.
Raphmedia 7y ago
Could this be the cause of all bee deaths? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7220795/Shocking-footage-shows-thousands-dead-bees-7-1-magnitude-earthquake-struck-California.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7220795/Shocking-fo...
rsuelzer 7y ago
Interesting, this would be a problem for emergency communications set up to run on HF if it did indeed cause a total blackout. I know the VA out here uses HF for emergency communications in the event of a major disaster, I believe 80 meters. This would be a problem if a major earthquake killed propagation.
- jupp0r 7y ago
  20m seems to have suffered less, which is good to keep in mind.
mnemotronic 7y ago
So if earthquakes do generate "electric field lines", can we tap into that and generate electricity from those field lines? And, if so, since that would be "stealing" energy from the quake, could it diminish the quake intensity? Theoretically.
- c3534l 7y ago
  It's energy that's already left the quake. It's not like wave generators stop earthquakes which cause tsunamis.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  Next in the agenda: stealing energy from lightning.
  - Ericson2314 7y ago
    https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/is-there-a-way-to-harness-electricity-from-lightning/ https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/is-there-... TIL a lightening bolt is a nickle's worth of energy.
    - enjo 7y ago
      TIL that 1.21 gigawatts is $.05.
      - heavenlyblue 7y ago
        It's 1.21 gigawatts, but only 0.25KiloWatt/hours.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      TL;DR: a literal nickle. The article estimates that a typical lightning bolt contains only about 0.25kWh, which is surprisingly little, if you put it like this. I always thought lightning bolts had something closer to a megawatt-hour, so thanks for clearing that up for me!
matthoiland 7y ago
>RF Seismograph showed an increase in noise on 80 meters some 13 hours beforehand, as well as some propagation changes on 40 and 30 meters — low before the quake and increasing in its wake. Hours. Hours beforehand. Having that much preparation would be life-saving. Especially for us living near the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
- duxup 7y ago
  I don't think it has been consistent as far as observations go, so its usefulness in prediction seems unknown at this point.
- kawfey 7y ago
  Keep in mind that this report has come about with zero peer reviewing (I think it's a little strange it's been published by the ARRL to be honest), and another thing that is missing is that it needs to be correlated with solar activity, operator activity, local noise, and even thunderstorm activity, among other influences, before one can validate a change in HF propagation is a precursor to earthquakes.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    All these things sound like stuff which can be controlled for.
    - colechristensen 7y ago
      Absolutely, but it just needs to be done. Because there are also a million other correlations with the earthquakes which are just coincidences.
      - lb1lf 7y ago
        -Which is all the reason I need to bring up Tyler Vigen’s amazing spurious correlations: https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
briantakita 7y ago
https://quakewatch.net https://quakewatch.net has a track record of predicting Earthquake risk based on solar activity, space weather, & "blot echos". They successfully forecasted Southern California as a major risk.
mikevansnell 7y ago
I don't see anything like a blackout: https://pskreporter.info/cgi-bin/pskstats.pl https://pskreporter.info/cgi-bin/pskstats.pl For those who don't know, PSK reporter is a system for logging propagation reports using digital modes like PSK and FT8, mostly on HF amateur bands (incl. 80,40,30m). You might expect to see some kind of effect on July 4 if this effect were as widespread as described in the article, but to my eye it looks like a normal day.
- joncrane 7y ago
  Oh wow, an old school Perl CGI script! I remember doing those about 20 years ago. Neat.
  - wiml 7y ago
    Serverless lambdas, before they were cool!
tonymet 7y ago
If you found this interesting look into getting your ham license it's fun.
LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
Wouldnt it be safer to milk the fault of its stored kinetic energy in a infinite series of small quakes? Not just listen at the tip of the gun for the big click, but actually slowly have the hammer go forward and prevent the big one?
plowman 7y ago
This reminds me of "Earthquake Weather" which I had never heard of until moving to the Bay Area. Some people who grew up here believe this is a real thing despite the total absence of evidence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_weather https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_weather
tinix 7y ago
Eric Dollard is giving a talk later this week about this, and he's been talking about this stuff for YEARS. Some people here are excited about hours... but this guy can detect these things DAYS in advance. Preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE3QR3QUUd4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE3QR3QUUd4 See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetotellurics#Earthquake_precursor_prediction_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetotellurics#Earthquake_pr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismo-electromagnetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismo-electromagnetics
- jflrdl 7y ago
  I know Eric Dollard I met the man. The man is quite frankly a quack. Been promising earthquake detection for decades but has produced nothing of value. Except to vacuum the pockets of his supporters and make wild claims that he cant prove. Typical anti government paranoid type. Been doing this for "years" is right Since the seventy's working with borderland, a hippy type free energy commune until even they got fed up with his antics and booted him out. Typical quackery, never measure input vs. output The history of this guy reads like an soap opera for the feeble minded.
8bitsrule 7y ago
It's good that people are observing anything ... even including the moisture content of Yeti skulls, and value of da Vinci paintings ... and trying to correlate it with anything that can't be predicted and kills people. Some day it will pay off. There was a time not so long ago when sprites, whistlers, jets, starters, ELVs and other TLEs were funny stuff. Today we understand that gammas are produced by thunderstorms. Times change. https://physics.unh.edu/events/colloquium/probing-particle-accelerator-lives-thunderstorms https://physics.unh.edu/events/colloquium/probing-particle-a...

218 points by sciurus 7y ago

Most interesting is that interference began before the earthquakes hit. Is that already a datapoint that is being used in earthquake predictions?

TallGuyShort 7y ago
That is interesting... My first guess upon seeing the headline was that the earthquake could have caused some key point-to-point microwave links to be misaligned. But no - for those not reading the full article - it's actually an electromagnetic field caused by the earthquake being propagated up into the atmosphere...
Raphmedia 7y ago
Take with a grain of salt. This is pseudoscience at best. There were some reports of earthquake lights[1][2][3] and earthquake clouds[4][5][6] recently. There's some online communities dedicated to those, e.g. https://quakewatch.net/predictioncenter/ https://quakewatch.net/predictioncenter/ ___ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light [2] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/men-film-glowing-snake-like-16506345 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/men-film-glowing-sn... [3] https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/789760/Colorado-UFO-plunge-sky-speed-off-mystery-green-plasma-video https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/789760/Colorado-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_cloud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_cloud [5] https://weather.com/vertical/video/strange-clouds-seen-in-co-2 https://weather.com/vertical/video/strange-clouds-seen-in-co... [6] https://www.denverpost.com/2019/06/20/boulder-rare-helix-cloud/ https://www.denverpost.com/2019/06/20/boulder-rare-helix-clo... Edit: I mean accurate forecasting and prediction using this data is pseudoscience.
- moftz 7y ago
  What does that cloud formation have to do with earthquakes? That cloud was filmed in Boulder, not anywhere near southern California. The light thing seems pretty neat and there looks to be a bunch of possible explanations for the source. Although some of the videos I watched looked more like flashes of electricity coming from powerlines snapping or transformers blowing which could definitely happen if the earth was shifting.
  - Raphmedia 7y ago
    I'm just the messenger, I have not spent any time researching the details of those claims. There's some overlapping between some online communities I participate in and the doomsday preppers/tracker community so that's why I stumbled on this. The Wikipedia page for Earthquake Lights talks about lights as far as 740 km from the epicenter, so I'd bet that's the answer people who associate those with the quakes will tell you. As I said take it with a grain of salt.
  - zamalek 7y ago
    > What does that cloud formation have to do with earthquakes? Last I read about the alleged phenomena, you're supposedly looking for straight line or ripple clouds that form in seconds. The explanation is that some mechanism (originally friction) is boiling groundwater; but proponents can no longer agree on what mechanism leads to formation of the clouds.
    - harshreality 7y ago
      Why would earthquakes cause a significant amount of groundwater to boil? Supposing there were enough water vapor to do that, how would boiling groundwater form clouds at all, much less in seconds? There's still a lot of earth in the way between the fault and the sky. Ground shaking does not mean that energy is converted into heat. Does the ground feel hot after an earthquake? Warm at all? Earthquakes, right? Not volcanoes or magma chambers? If this phenomenon were real, wouldn't you expect it to occur right before a volcanic eruption, which actually involves large amounts of magma, near the surface, which could actually vaporize large amounts of groundwater? As far as I can tell, that doesn't happen either. The water vapor erupts with the molten rock, and mainly condenses into volcanic clouds because it has volcanic particles to condense around, not because the water vapor itself is enough to form clouds on its own before dissipating.
birdman3131 7y ago
As I read the article it is possible to notice them after the fact but difficult to tell the difference between them and the normal changes as you go from day to night thus making prediction dicey at best.
phonethrowaway 7y ago
You mean like this? http://ericpdollard.com/2014/06/23/the-landers-facility-of-eric-dollard-and-walter-deroche/ http://ericpdollard.com/2014/06/23/the-landers-facility-of-e...
maratumba 7y ago
Seismologist here. So far, no reliable predictor of main shocks (largest earthquake in a sequence) has been found. People have been looking for them ever since the invention of the modern seismometer networks in the 60s. Most of the EM based earthquake prediction is based on really loose reasoning. In summary, it goes like this: "earthquakes can generate EM fields through piezo-electric effect, therefore small movements before big earthquakes should generate small EM fields we can measure". But there is almost never no such thing as "small movements before big earthquakes", which is why reliably predicting them has been impossible so far. Most likely, this will turn out to be an example of confirmation bias. In the unlikely event that it is not, people will be all over this.
- jofer 7y ago
  To be fair, there are some well documented EM precursors. The most classic is from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/GL017i009p01465%4010.1002/%28ISSN%291944-8007.LOMAPRIE1 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/GL01... Recently, some fairly convincing ionospheric-related (i.e. GPS delay) precursors have also been observed before Tohoku and (less convincingly) several other major earthquakes. (e.g. Heki, 2011, Iwata & Umeno 2016, and several other references I forget. Mostly from the same couple research groups.) We don't have a full mechanism to explain them (or, rather, there are a lot of competing mechanisms that don't fully explain things). More importantly, precursors don't seem to occur consistently as you noted. However, they're also not worth automatically dismissing. The idea that they're all a simple case of confirmation bias has been extensively discussed, and while it's not currently possible to refute, it's starting to seem less likely. There's certainly been a lot more attention given to possible precursors and mechanisms in the last 5 years than there were before. It's a serious avenue of research right now. Keep an eye out then next time you're at AGU. I guarantee you you'll see at least a few posters around possible precursors and/or precursor mechanisms. Forecasting is definitely pseudoscience, but EM-related precursors are a fairly hot (and controversial) research topic at the moment.
  - bsder 7y ago
    > Forecasting is definitely pseudoscience, but EM-related precursors are a fairly hot (and controversial) research topic at the moment. It's not pseudoscience because it can be disproven--which is generally what happens. The issue that everybody forgets is that predictions have FOUR outcomes, not two. You have the one everybody remembers: "I predicted X and X happened". You have the one some people remember: "I didn't predict X and X didn't happen." You have the one that people rarely remember: "I predicted X and X didn't happen." You have the one nobody remembers: "I didn't predict X, but X happened." The problem is that for rare events, the "predict X and not X" and "didn't predict X but X" have to be REALLY low probability for a measure to be useful.

gregcrv 7y ago

It’s probably related to the earthquake light phenomenon. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light

RIMR 7y ago
How can it "probably" be related to something that almost certainly doesn't actually exist?
- gregcrv 7y ago
  Because if you read the above comments, changes in the ionosphere caused by earthquakes are scientifically proven. Ionization of the ionosphere is also what causes auroras. Triboluminescence as another hypothesis is also proven, you can try in your kitchen with sugar!
- vokep 7y ago
  probably because it similarly doesn't actually exist (or whatever form of it does exist has nothing to do with predicting earthquakes)

supernova87a 7y ago

It's surprising to read about, but not implausible. You put that much stress on crystalline material over miles and who knows, you could get piezoelectric kinds of effects creating huge EM fields.

hnitbanalns 7y ago

Would this explain the bee deaths during the last several days?

runeks 7y ago

What’s HF?

pizza 7y ago
High frequency radio band
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
  Also known by the public as "shortwave radio" (although only a part of the HF spectrum is used for commercial broadcasting, but HF and shortwave is essentially used interchangeably).
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
abruzzi 7y ago
generally defined as 3mhz to 30mhz.
- i_am_proteus 7y ago
  Yes! For those not familiar with radio, HF (high frequency) is a frequency range that's higher than what's used for AM broadcast and lower than FM broadcast. Much lower than frequencies used in WiFi and cell phones. What makes it interesting here is that it's a frequency range that is commonly-used and that also propagates in modes other than line-of-sight. For instance 'groundwave' propagation curves around the Earth because of induced currents in the Earth. This allows HF communication over the horizon. Enthusiasts are regularly able to make contact between continents with amplifier power of less than 5 Watts.
  - packet_nerd 7y ago
    I think groundwave propagation only happens reliably at the extreme low end of the HF spectrum, and is mostly associated with medium and long waves (160m ham band & AM radio for example). For most of the HF spectrum reflections off the ionosphere are the main useful propagation mode. At the short end (like CB radio) bouncing of the ionosphere is harder so line-of-sight is more common.

pwlb 7y ago

intresting article about the phenomenom: http://www.ep.sci.hokudai.ac.jp/~heki/pdf/Scientific_American_Vance2018.pdf http://www.ep.sci.hokudai.ac.jp/~heki/pdf/Scientific_America...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

blondie9x 7y ago

I'm not following does this mean the Earthquakes are connected in Vancouver and Los Angeles?

Wohlf 7y ago
Both are on the edge of the north american plate, where it meets the pacific plate. Everything on the edge of the pacific plate is referred to as the "ring of fire" due to frequency of earthquakes.
- kwk1 7y ago
  ... due to the prevalence of volcanoes.

Raphmedia 7y ago

Could this be the cause of all bee deaths? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7220795/Shocking-footage-shows-thousands-dead-bees-7-1-magnitude-earthquake-struck-California.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7220795/Shocking-fo...

rsuelzer 7y ago

Interesting, this would be a problem for emergency communications set up to run on HF if it did indeed cause a total blackout. I know the VA out here uses HF for emergency communications in the event of a major disaster, I believe 80 meters. This would be a problem if a major earthquake killed propagation.

jupp0r 7y ago
20m seems to have suffered less, which is good to keep in mind.

mnemotronic 7y ago

So if earthquakes do generate "electric field lines", can we tap into that and generate electricity from those field lines? And, if so, since that would be "stealing" energy from the quake, could it diminish the quake intensity? Theoretically.

c3534l 7y ago
It's energy that's already left the quake. It's not like wave generators stop earthquakes which cause tsunamis.
heavenlyblue 7y ago
Next in the agenda: stealing energy from lightning.
- Ericson2314 7y ago
  https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/is-there-a-way-to-harness-electricity-from-lightning/ https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/is-there-... TIL a lightening bolt is a nickle's worth of energy.
  - enjo 7y ago
    TIL that 1.21 gigawatts is $.05.
    - heavenlyblue 7y ago
      It's 1.21 gigawatts, but only 0.25KiloWatt/hours.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    TL;DR: a literal nickle. The article estimates that a typical lightning bolt contains only about 0.25kWh, which is surprisingly little, if you put it like this. I always thought lightning bolts had something closer to a megawatt-hour, so thanks for clearing that up for me!

matthoiland 7y ago

>RF Seismograph showed an increase in noise on 80 meters some 13 hours beforehand, as well as some propagation changes on 40 and 30 meters — low before the quake and increasing in its wake. Hours. Hours beforehand. Having that much preparation would be life-saving. Especially for us living near the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

duxup 7y ago
I don't think it has been consistent as far as observations go, so its usefulness in prediction seems unknown at this point.
kawfey 7y ago
Keep in mind that this report has come about with zero peer reviewing (I think it's a little strange it's been published by the ARRL to be honest), and another thing that is missing is that it needs to be correlated with solar activity, operator activity, local noise, and even thunderstorm activity, among other influences, before one can validate a change in HF propagation is a precursor to earthquakes.
- jacobush 7y ago
  All these things sound like stuff which can be controlled for.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    Absolutely, but it just needs to be done. Because there are also a million other correlations with the earthquakes which are just coincidences.
    - lb1lf 7y ago
      -Which is all the reason I need to bring up Tyler Vigen’s amazing spurious correlations: https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

briantakita 7y ago

https://quakewatch.net https://quakewatch.net has a track record of predicting Earthquake risk based on solar activity, space weather, & "blot echos". They successfully forecasted Southern California as a major risk.

mikevansnell 7y ago

I don't see anything like a blackout: https://pskreporter.info/cgi-bin/pskstats.pl https://pskreporter.info/cgi-bin/pskstats.pl For those who don't know, PSK reporter is a system for logging propagation reports using digital modes like PSK and FT8, mostly on HF amateur bands (incl. 80,40,30m). You might expect to see some kind of effect on July 4 if this effect were as widespread as described in the article, but to my eye it looks like a normal day.

joncrane 7y ago
Oh wow, an old school Perl CGI script! I remember doing those about 20 years ago. Neat.
- wiml 7y ago
  Serverless lambdas, before they were cool!

tonymet 7y ago

If you found this interesting look into getting your ham license it's fun.

LifeLiverTransp 7y ago

Wouldnt it be safer to milk the fault of its stored kinetic energy in a infinite series of small quakes? Not just listen at the tip of the gun for the big click, but actually slowly have the hammer go forward and prevent the big one?

plowman 7y ago

This reminds me of "Earthquake Weather" which I had never heard of until moving to the Bay Area. Some people who grew up here believe this is a real thing despite the total absence of evidence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_weather https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_weather

tinix 7y ago

Eric Dollard is giving a talk later this week about this, and he's been talking about this stuff for YEARS. Some people here are excited about hours... but this guy can detect these things DAYS in advance. Preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE3QR3QUUd4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE3QR3QUUd4 See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetotellurics#Earthquake_precursor_prediction_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetotellurics#Earthquake_pr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismo-electromagnetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismo-electromagnetics

jflrdl 7y ago
I know Eric Dollard I met the man. The man is quite frankly a quack. Been promising earthquake detection for decades but has produced nothing of value. Except to vacuum the pockets of his supporters and make wild claims that he cant prove. Typical anti government paranoid type. Been doing this for "years" is right Since the seventy's working with borderland, a hippy type free energy commune until even they got fed up with his antics and booted him out. Typical quackery, never measure input vs. output The history of this guy reads like an soap opera for the feeble minded.

8bitsrule 7y ago

It's good that people are observing anything ... even including the moisture content of Yeti skulls, and value of da Vinci paintings ... and trying to correlate it with anything that can't be predicted and kills people. Some day it will pay off. There was a time not so long ago when sprites, whistlers, jets, starters, ELVs and other TLEs were funny stuff. Today we understand that gammas are produced by thunderstorms. Times change. https://physics.unh.edu/events/colloquium/probing-particle-accelerator-lives-thunderstorms https://physics.unh.edu/events/colloquium/probing-particle-a...