If these can be triggered so far in advance of a quake, couldn't we bury instruments of some kind that also trigger under those conditions? That would be useful regardless what types of rocks are in the area.
It might not be perfect, but anything is better than the no warning we have now.
I remember various ways of aurora detection but all of them depend more or less of precise wavelengths being observed and doing some noise filtering and amplification. It sounds here that various manifestations are possible so hopefully a method could be found, but it could be complex.
We do have pretty good aurora forecasting though, through satellites upstream in the solar wind. There are even smartphone apps for that, I'll plug this one that a friend of mine was involved in:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.unis.Aurora...
Having experienced the 6th largest earthquake ever recorded by a seismograph [1] I can assure you the lights I saw during that night were a lot brighter and higher in the sky, so power lines and transformers are ruled out. I was living fairly close to the epicenter (about 18 miles from the picture you can see in the wikipedia) and the lights were up for several minutes after the electricity went out.
Totally agree about that. I think those are what most of us saw (I was there, and the lights I saw coincided with the power failing). HOWEVER:
.. several of the cameras from the video were facing the ocean (i.e. the one at Larcomar, the mall in front of the sea, or the one at the airport, which is right next to the sea).
Also, many people reported lights from either the ocean or from desert hills that lacked transmission towers or anything electric.
Although I'm still not totally sold on the idea of rocks emitting light, I hope I won't have the chance to verify it for myself, as the experience of an entire pitch-black city being illuminated with light arks in the middle of an earthquake was scary enough.
>Freund says common forms of earthquake lights include bluish flames that appear to come out of the ground at ankle height; orbs of light called ball lightning that float in the air for tens of seconds or even minutes
Perhaps coincidental and unrelated, but similar orbs have been reported in conjunction with crop circle events.
I'm also inclined to believe that. Only one problem: in addition to crop circles that can easily be attributed to humans there are some that has been really hard to pin down it seems. (Because of the product of precision and timing etc.)
I think it could be interesting if someone would watch those places with drones and IR etc but until it is thoroughly explained I'd admit that we expect to be able to explain it but at the moment we don't know.
Edit:remove hyperbole (be more than happy -> think it could be interesting )
It might not be perfect, but anything is better than the no warning we have now.