FE1.4 - Luces en el Cielo

Published: Aug. 16, 2018, 7:45 a.m.

During the devastating September 9, 2017 earthquake off the coast of southern Mexico, residents of Mexico City and Quetzaltenango, Guatemala witnessed mysterious bursts of light in the sky. These lights, however, were not UFOs, exploding transformers, or evidence of a mysterious government conspiracy - instead, they were examples of a long-documented phenomenon known as \u201cearthquake lights.\u201d\n\nCan these mysterious lights in the sky help us learn to anticipate earthquakes? Can physics explain the strange animal behaviour linked to seismic activity? We unravel the science \u2013 and controversy \u2013 of a new interpretation of geophysics, and we talk to two groups developing very different technologies with the same goal: saving lives from earthquake disaster.