Blue Light Spotted in Marrakesh Sky before Earthquake

A man stands next to a damaged hotel after the earthquake inMoulay Brahim village, near the epicentre of the earthquake, outsideMarrakech, Morocco, September 9, 2023. (Mosa'ab Elshamy/AP)
A man stands next to a damaged hotel after the earthquake inMoulay Brahim village, near the epicentre of the earthquake, outsideMarrakech, Morocco, September 9, 2023. (Mosa'ab Elshamy/AP)
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Blue Light Spotted in Marrakesh Sky before Earthquake

A man stands next to a damaged hotel after the earthquake inMoulay Brahim village, near the epicentre of the earthquake, outsideMarrakech, Morocco, September 9, 2023. (Mosa'ab Elshamy/AP)
A man stands next to a damaged hotel after the earthquake inMoulay Brahim village, near the epicentre of the earthquake, outsideMarrakech, Morocco, September 9, 2023. (Mosa'ab Elshamy/AP)

When a strong earthquake hit Morocco, footage showing blue lights in the sky right before the disaster, went viral on social media.

Few months ago, similar videos spread before the Kahramanmaras 7.8-magnitude earthquake, which affected Türkiye and parts of Syria.

What are these lights?

 

Like ball lightning, earthquake lights are relatively rare—captivating but hard for scientists to explain. These instances of luminosity around earthquakes don't all look the same, sparking theories that range from plain old lightning to UFOs.

The lights can take "many different shapes, forms, and colors," Friedemann Freund, an adjunct professor of physics at San Jose State University and a senior researcher at NASA's Ames Research Center, said in a 2014 National Geographic interview.

 

Earthquake lights in history

 

Freund and colleagues studied 65 accounts of such lights reaching as far back as 1600, publishing their findings in the journal Seismological Research Letters in 2014.

On November 12, 1988, for example, people reported a bright purple-pink globe of light along the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, 11 days before a powerful quake. In Pisco, Peru, the lights were bright flashes that lit up the sky, captured in security camera video before an 8.0-magnitude quake in 2007. Before a 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy, 10-centimetre flames of light were seen flickering above a stone street.

 

Are they real?

The US Geological Survey is circumspect about whether earthquake lights, or EQL, really exist. "Geophysicists differ on the extent to which they think that individual reports of unusual lighting near the time and epicenter of an earthquake actually represent EQL," the agency says on its website.

 

What could cause earthquake lights?

Analyzing 65 earthquake light incidents for patterns, Freund and colleagues theorized that the lights are caused by electric charges activated in certain types of rocks during seismic activity, "as if you switched on a battery in the Earth's crust".

Basalt and gabbro rocks, for example, have tiny defects in their crystals that could release electrical charges into the air.

The conditions that lend themselves to the lights exist in less than 0.5 percent of earthquakes worldwide, the scientists estimated, which would explain why they have been relatively rare.

They also noted that the earthquake lights more commonly appear before or during quakes, not as much afterward.

An earlier study proposed that tectonic stress created a so-called "piezoelectric effect", in which quartz-bearing rocks produce strong electric fields when compressed in a certain way.

But one of the complications in studying earthquake lights is, of course, that they're unpredictable and short-lived. In an attempt to work around this, some scientists have attempted to recreate the phenomenon in the lab.

In a study led by a physicist at New Jersey's Rutgers University and published in 2014, grains of different materials—flour and plastic—produced voltage spikes when agitated. The scientists attributed this effect to friction between the grains, which would contradict both the piezoelectric theory and Freund's.

As long as conflicting scientific theories emerge, the debate over causes of earthquake lights stands to remain charged.



Götz Valien: The Last Dinosaur in the Movie Poster Industry

Götz Valien (Getty)
Götz Valien (Getty)
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Götz Valien: The Last Dinosaur in the Movie Poster Industry

Götz Valien (Getty)
Götz Valien (Getty)

In a digital age, Götz Valien is Berlin’s last movie poster artist, producing giant hand-painted film adverts.

For more than three decades, Austrian-born Valien, 65, earns a modest living producing film posters to hang at the city’s most beloved historic cinemas, a craft he says will probably die with him, at least in western Europe.

He adds a distinctive pop art flourish to each image coupled with the beauty of imperfection, part of the reason he has managed to extend his career well into the 21st century, according to an article published by The Guardian.

“Advertising is about drawing attention and I add the human touch, which is why it works,” he told the newspaper.

Valien’s work plays up the image’s essence: the imposing bow of a ship, the haunting eyes of a screen siren, a mysterious smile. He jokingly calls himself a Kinosaurier – a play on the German words for cinema and dinosaur.

His nearly-7x9-meter canvases long-graced the “film palaces” of the German capital, including the majestic Delphi in the west and the socialist modernist masterpiece Kino International on Karl Marx Allee in the east.

But the former’s adverts finally went digital in 2024, while the latter is closed for a years-long, top-to-bottom revamp. Dozens of independent cinemas among his clients have simply gone out of business.

The century-old Filmtheater am Friedrichshain (FaF) is the last movie theater in Berlin still employing Valien to tout its new releases, with his large-format posters covering its facade and interior walls around the ticket-and-popcorn counter.

Movie posters have existed as long as the nearly 130-year-old film industry.

But these days, few releases stay long enough in cinemas to justify bespoke art to advertise them, communications studies professor Patrick Rössler of the University of Erfurt, who has studied the history of film posters, told local media. And most independent cinemas don’t have the profit margins to afford them, even at what Valien calls his bargain-basement prices.