Connect with us

Tech

Blue lights before earthquake? Scientists explain this strange phenomenon

Published

on

Several videos on social media have surfaced from Morocco showing a blue flashlight emanating from the horizon, shortly before a potent 6.8 earthquake which struck southwest of Marrakech last Friday, leaving nearly 3,000 people dead and over 3,000 injured.

Rescue mission by a number of countries in the North African nation is currently underway as emergency services are searching rubbles for bodies and survivors. 

Earlier, a French expert also issued warnings about the aftershocks, despite the country not being in the “most active seismological region”.

CCTV on social media showed powerful flashes of light just before the shaking. Experts have termed these luminous phenomena real however, they are still scratching their heads about what causes them.

John Derr, a retired geophysicist who worked at the US Geological Survey told CNN that these different colours of lights are definitely real.

“Seeing EQL depends on darkness and other favorability factors,” Derr, who worked on these earthquake lights explained.

He said the recent “video from Morocco shared online looked like the earthquake lights caught on security cameras during a 2007 quake in Pisco, Peru.”

Juan Antonio Lira Cacho, a physics professor at Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Peru and the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, who has studied the phenomenon, said video and security cameras have made studying earthquake lights easier.

Different earthquake lights

There are several types of lights as mentioned by a paper coauthored by Derr and published in the 2019 edition of the Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics.

the lights appear as normal lighting or sometimes it may look like a band same as a polar aurora. They may also look as floating in midair. One of the kind also includes a flame-like emanation from the ground.

To make sense of this, Derr and his colleagues collected all the concerned information from earthquake lights as old as the year 1600.

Their work was published in 2014 in a paper in the journal Seismological Research Letters.

Their findings revealed that some 80% of the earthquake lights were found in earthquakes of over 5.0 magnitudes. According to the findings, the occurrence was witnessed shortly before or during the earthquake, visible up 600 kilometres (372.8 miles) from the epicentre.

Most of the time, earthquakes take place in the nearby convergence areas of tectonic plates. However, the study found that in most of cases, luminous phenomena occurred within tectonic plates, rather than at their boundaries.

According to reports, these lights are most likely to be visible near rift valleys, places where Earth’s crust had been forced apart.

Theory explaining earthquake lights

A theory was put forth by Friedemann Freund, Derr’s collaborator, an adjunct professor at San Jose University and a former Nasa researcher.

Freund told CNN that when certain defects or impurities in crystals in rocks are put under mechanical stress — such as during activity between tectonic plates — they instantly break apart and generate electricity.

He noted that rock is an insulator that, when mechanically stressed, becomes a semiconductor.

He added: “Prior to earthquakes, huge volumes of rock — hundreds of thousands of cubic kilometres of rocks in the Earth’s crust — are being stressed and the stresses are causing shifting of the grain, the mineral grains relative (to) each other.”

“It’s like switching on a battery, generating electrical charges that can flow out of the stressed rocks into and through unstressed rocks. The charges travel fast, at up to around 200 metres per second,” he explained in a 2014 article for The Conversation.

Some other explanations also state that static electricity is produced by the fracturing of rock and radon emanation, among many others.

There is no agreement on this phenomenon and this mystery is being studied by the scientists.

Freund expected that there may come a time when it would be possible to use earthquake lights, or the electric charge that causes them, to help forecast the approach of a major earthquake.

Latest News

AI detecting techniques are going to be introduced by YouTube.

Published

on

By

The artificial intelligence (AI) tools that YouTube plans to introduce have been unveiled. Using artificial intelligence technology, these technologies intend to assist in identifying individuals, voices, and music inside videos found on YouTube.

With the help of artificial intelligence synthetic sounds, the company has improved its Content ID system so that it can identify instances of copyright violations in songs.

The new function, which identifies artificial sounds emulating those of artificial singers, notifies users. The first edition will be made available to the public the next year, and then it will be taken to a more widespread audience.

A feature that will assist in recognizing deepfake faces in videos is also being introduced by YouTube.

It will be possible for consumers to be aware of the fact that their faces are being utilized in videos that were produced by artificial intelligence without their permission.

A greater degree of control over the video platform is intended to be granted to celebrities and artists.

Those who are impacted have the ability to contact YouTube’s privacy request mechanism in order to request that films of this nature be removed from the platform.

A guideline that previously designated such videos as artificial intelligence or content that was misleading is currently being strengthened and modified by the firm.

Continue Reading

Latest News

Users of WhatsApp will be able to access status updates straight from the viewer list.

Published

on

By

This feature is being expanded to include the sheet that shows who has viewed your status in the most recent update of the Meta-owned app. From now on, if a contact in the viewer list has also shared a status update, users will see a green circle around that contact’s photo.

Focusing on enhancing exposure and accessibility to fresh content, WhatsApp is exploring new features to improve the status update user experience, according to a WABetaInfo report. We learned that WhatsApp is rolling out the feature to open status updates from the viewer list thanks to the WhatsApp beta for Android 2.24.19.4 update, which is accessible on the Google Play Store.”

WhatsApp users can now view who has posted new material without having to navigate via the status updates tab, making it easier to remain up to date with status updates.

As to the report, “We think this enhances the user experience by simplifying the interaction with status updates from various entry points within the application.”

With the most recent version of WhatsApp beta for Android loaded from the Google Play Store, a select group of beta testers can now access the functionality; other users should be able to access it in the very near future.

Continue Reading

Latest News

The Apple iPhone 16 event showcases new watches, AirPods, and AI power.

Published

on

By

“Apple Intelligence was the driving force behind the design of the upcoming iPhone generation. “At a product introduction, Chief Executive Tim Cook declared that it signified the start of an exciting new age.

Apple’s stock finished the day hardly altered at $220.91. The competitive issue that Apple confronts is highlighted by the timing of its event, which took place just hours before China’s Huawei (HWT.UL) unveiled a tri-fold phone. To power the 16s, Apple has not yet revealed its AI partner in China.

Phones are anticipated to be one of the key arenas for the competition between Apple and other tech giants worldwide to include AI into their products. The corporation, located in Cupertino, California, is also placing bets that the AI function would encourage customers to upgrade in the midst of dropping iPhone sales.

According to corporate insiders, Siri will be enhanced with Apple Intelligence, the AI program, to include features like object recognition and understanding from phone cameras.

The English language version of the U.S. will have access to a test version of Apple Intelligence starting next month. It will be accessible in December for further English localizations; versions in Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish will follow the following year. According to Apple, features will be released gradually, including enhancements for Siri. But it didn’t specify when it would go past testing.

With an aluminum case and updated chip, the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus will cost the same as the versions they replace. One of the most praised hardware elements in a format resembling earlier models was an adjustable button that could operate the camera.

With titanium construction and enhanced AI capabilities, the more expensive iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max can advise better photo shoot setups and offer audio editing tools targeted at high-end video production.

With particular capabilities designed to accelerate AI applications, Apple’s new iPhone CPUs are built on the most recent iteration of Arm’s architecture.

“Upgrading would likely entice existing iPhone owners who have owned their smartphone for 3–4 years, even if some features are trickling out later, as this will future-proof their device for AI,” said Nabila Popal, an analyst at International Data Corp.

However, many potential customers were first kept off the market by the feature delays, according to multiple analysts.

It is possible that individuals will hold off on starting research until they have a better understanding of how these things operate. TECHnalysis Research founder Bob O’Donnell stated, “But I don’t think we’ll see the mad rush that we’ve seen in years past.”

On the other hand, Huawei’s website said on Monday that it had received over 3 million pre-orders for its Z-shaped tri-fold phone before it was formally unveiled. In China, where customers yearn for more AI features and are prepared to pay for them, this highlights Huawei’s capacity to get around US restrictions and strengthens its position against Apple.

Airpods and watches
Apple also introduced upgraded hardware design along with new Watches and AirPods with health-focused features. Apple highlighted the Watch’s capacity to identify and react to emergencies like falls as well as longer-term health concerns like sleep apnea.

Apple released hearing-aid features that it has submitted for regulatory assessment in the United States together with the AirPods upgrade.

The new AI-powered phones have been anticipated by Apple enthusiasts worldwide. Of Apple’s $383 billion in revenue last year, more than half came from iPhones.

According to D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria, “Apple has packaged them well and will be able to market them far more broadly, even though Android phones may have some of these features.”

China presents unique difficulties for Apple.

According to Gadjo Sevilla, a senior technology analyst at eMarketer, “Apple dropped out of the top five smartphone vendors in China in Q2.” For the first time, indigenous Chinese smartphone companies occupied all five positions. Apple Intelligence won’t probably be a major factor in the region’s adoption at first because Beijing still has to give its approval before it can be implemented in China.

Early this year, Apple drastically reduced pricing in China as a result of local competition and government constraints.

Although the AI features are anticipated to be available on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, the high-end models of the previous generation, the iPhone 16 lineup is the first Apple smartphones built around them.

Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) rivals open a new tab In an effort to challenge Apple’s hegemony in the high-end smartphone market, Google is also displaying AI technologies.

Google, the company behind the Android operating system, which rivals Apple’s iOS, concentrated on artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities during the Pixel smartphone launch event in August. One such feature is Gemini Live, which enables users to have live speech conversations with a digital assistant.

Many of the artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that Google had revealed were also made available for Android-based devices from manufacturers including Motorola (MSI.N) and Samsung (005930.KS), opens new tab.

In June, a week following its developer conference, Apple announced that European Union tech regulations will cause it to postpone the rollout of AI-powered features in that region.

In China, Huawei plans to formally unveil the Mate XT Z-fold phone on Tuesday.

Continue Reading

Trending