ELF & Earthquakes

This seems like the best site to put this, and I remember I had an account.

For an annoying reason I won't get into, but you could probably guess, I am into EM Frequency particularly that associated with ULF and ELF.

It took me somewhere interesting today, and in superfluous way right back to Alaska.

While using a spectrum analyzer I caught a spike at 158 Hz. A spike consistent across all screenshots. 240, another consistent spike, is the cycling of my neighbors HDTV.

Along with that, there was also "blurring" and spike of up to 70 hz from a global Schumann frequency monitoring station.

As a geology nerd I immediately thought about earthquakes. This blurring is seen before particularly powerful earthquakes. And wouldn't you know It as I was "researching" I got something interesting. 4 hours ago there was 7.3 in the South Pacific, which is not at all uncommon.

With the Japan 8.9 the readings were out of whack beyond just spiking. Got me wondering nonetheless.

Still I will keep recording data.

[Top Image: spike at 158 hz with Spectroid, Bottom image: Schumann resonance data from monitoring app]

Here is a relevant academic paper:

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

Related blog:

cora-agrohomeopathie.com...

Unfortunately this account does not have ability or a browser error prevents me from posting the associated screenshots directly.

Links to images:

Top: ibb.co...
Bottom: ibb.co...

My question is, did I just catch the normal earth doing normal things, or did I catch an anomalous pre-earthquake perturbation?

*** Post edit - I have since determined the 158 hz reading was the white noise produced by the ac. I can rule that reading out, the second image remains valid though..

originally posted by: Degradation33
My question is, did I just catch the normal earth doing normal things, or did I catch an anomalous pre-earthquake perturbation?

Insufficient data. The screenshot you made with your phone is horizontal, but you used the portrait mode to take the photo instead of the landscape mode, which could have captured more detail and possibly made it legible.

The question I would look at if I could actually read the data is, how does the timing actually correlate to the earthquakes, exactly? At the bottom of the screenshot I see numbers 1-24, which I guess are hours of the day, but in what time zone? GMT or ? I would take the landscape format screenshot, and draw a vertical line at the time when the Earthquake occurred, to compare that to any anomalies on the graph. Any anomalies which don't have a high temporal correlation with the Earthquake I would assume probably have another cause. Also if there's a correlation, one might expect to see it happen more than one time, so more data analysis might show if similar types of anomalies have occurred with a similar timing relative to other earthquakes.

I was researching a similar topic lately about "Earthquake lights" which some have speculated are lights that can appear around the time of earthquakes, and there is further speculation that piezoelectric voltage generation from the stresses may induce a voltage in the air which ionizes the air molecules creating some sort of plasma. The piezoelectric effect is real enough, but the phenomenon of earthquake lights or "earth lights" in general is not well-documented. So it's not a completely implausible speculation that piezoelectric stresses around the time of an earthquake can generate atmospheric plasma which creates artifacts like Schumann resonances, but there's not much support for the idea that I have been able to find, except for highly speculative papers.

Then even if you read some of the eyewitness accounts of "earthquake lights" preceding an earthquake, at east some of those apparently have nothing to do with the earthquake. One incident explained in the link below was actually people seeing a cloud instead of atmospheric plasma. This subject of "Earthquake lights" has a lot to do with your question because if they were real, they could be a form of atmospheric plasma that can create resonances like the lightning strikes that cause Schumann resonances. But some researchers aren't convinced the claimed phenomenon is real, despite so many people apparently thinking it is. Related reading:

Earthquake Lights: Do They Exist? One of those things everyone seems to believe in, but for which there's almost no evidence.

There are also temporal contradictions. Some say they appear before an earthquake to warn that it's coming, and some say they happen during or after a quake. This lack of consistency tells us one thing very clearly: This is almost certainly not one, known, proven phenomenon.

Same questioning applies to your OP, is there any temporal pattern and is it a consistent pattern with more than one earthquake?

The author's conclusion:

My take is that most of the EQL (earthquake light) phenomenon is sufficiently anecdotal that it should be dismissed pending decent evidence. What remains is plausible, though still backed up by only incomplete theory and poor evidence, and that's conventional lightning striking near active faults during quakes. It's a plausible idea, in search of better observations with better theory to explain them.

So that's very relevant to what you're looking at since lightning strikes are thought to be the origin of the Schumann resonances, If Earthquake stresses are inducing voltages in the ground it's plausible that they might attract lightning somehow, so what could be happening is something like Earthquake related lightning.

I think the lightning associated with volcanic eruptions is easier to understand. It's not implausible to have lightning associated with Earthquakes too, but despite all the scientific speculation, the real, hard scientific evidence is lacking.

Agreed. Though it wasn't intended to be anything overly scientific. A opening talking point. "This is sorta cool".

I would also put this along with earthquake lights, and clouds (weather) into the a like category of circumstantially cool, but demanding consistent across the board results of similar deformations happening in a consistently repeating pattern.

Per request the event happened at 02:50 UTC and has since been downgraded to a 7.0, a profoundly less powerful and rare event.

Event plotted: ibb.co...

Here is a more identifiable Q-factor plot with the event in question marked by a line. I have decided to do this for every earthquake measuring 7.0 or greater anywhere on earth for the next 6 months, and will return to this with the results.

But you are very correct in your opening comment.

Addendum:

There is also a swarm of sorts in India. Much less powerful, but string of moderate tremors all around 10 km depth. The strongest so far being 6.1 at 14:03 UTC

Many times these will show up and disappear, after they are determined to be a sonic boom or something, which can register in the 5-6 range.

You can actually catch them around Edwards AFB occassionially, but that is a different topic entirely.

So here are some additional screenshots of more insuffient but possibly related things.

Image A: ibb.co...
Image B: ibb.co...

Scientific or not it will still be fun to collect nerdy data even if it shows no correlation in the end.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

So that's very relevant to what you're looking at since lightning strikes are thought to be the origin of the Schumann resonances

[Pedant mode]
Schumann resonances are a function of the depth of the ionosphere/surface electromagnetic waveguide.
[/Pedant mode]

There is some evidence that electromagnetic precursors for earthquakes may be found in the ionosphere itself though. How useful that may be is questionable.

a reply to: Phage

Yes, that's what creates the place where resonance can occur. But you have to put something in that cavity that can resonate if you want to see something resonating.

Schumann Resonance

At any given moment about 2,000 thunderstorms roll over Earth, producing some 50 flashes of lightning every second. Each lightning burst creates electromagnetic waves that begin to circle around Earth captured between Earth's surface and a boundary about 60 miles up. Some of the waves - if they have just the right wavelength - combine, increasing in strength, to create a repeating atmospheric heartbeat known as Schumann resonance.

A rough analogy with sound might be a flute, which is a resonant cavity. Unless someone blows in it, nothing is resonating, it doesn't make any sound.

There is some evidence that electromagnetic precursors for earthquakes may be found in the ionosphere itself though. How useful that may be is questionable.

I wasn't aware of that, but I presume more research is needed.