Strange white balls light up the sky of Marrakech and appear static. After the terrible earthquake in Morocco, the provisional death toll of which was 2,680, a viral video showing this phenomenon has been viewed 1.3 million times on X (formerly Twitter). It was posted on September 9 and, according to the comment, shows the sky of Marrakech on the night of September 8 to 9, 2023. The phenomenon would “coincide” with the earthquake that devastated the country. The Haarp ionosphere research program is wrongly accused of being the cause.
This is not the first time that lights filmed in the sky during earthquakes are striking, such as a blue flash filmed during the earthquake in Turkey last February or lights in the sky over Mexico in September 2021. How can we understand these phenomena? On X, context notes were quickly added to explain that these were “seismic lights”. The phenomenon of white balls could be explained by “an electrical charge coming from seismic faults which would ionize the atmosphere,” commented Internet users. But this explanation comes from a controversial scientific hypothesis that has not been confirmed.
An explanation that divides scientists
According to the United States Geological Survey, the observation of “earthquake lights” phenomena divides scientists: for certain geophysicists, the reported phenomena “do not constitute solid proof” of seismic lights, while others believe that certain events can be qualified in this way. Some lights “were found to be associated with electrical arcing from shaking power lines” during the earthquake.
“This is the classic justification for this type of event,” underlines Lucile Bruhat, seismic risk analyst. There is an earthquake, the electrical cables will break. Arcing can occur very easily. » This arc is not a cause of the earthquake, but a consequence.
A hypothesis published in 2014
For the other cases, four Canadian and American researchers tried to explain the phenomenon. In 2014 they published their hypothesis In Seismological Research Letters, a reference journal in the field of seismology. From 65 testimonies deemed credible, they established that these lights could appear before, during or after the earthquake.
And distinguished four types: “The first are luminous spheres, which are either static or moving in the sky, the second brings together atmospheric luminosities, rapid and brief flashes, and also illuminations visible over several kilometers, detailed Robert Thériault, geologist at the Quebec Ministry of Natural Resources and first author of the study in Le Figaro in 2014. The third form looks like some kind of flames coming out of the earth, but they are not combustions because they do not emit heat. Finally, lastly, there are also light strips or columns that come out of the ground. »
According to their hypothesis, “a sudden release of electrical charges caused by sliding crystalline rocks would rise to the surface and ionize the ambient air”, that is to say an electrical reaction due to rock sliding. This publication is almost ten years old. We tried to contact Robert Thériault to find out if this research had evolved, but have not heard back yet.
And “very controversial”
This hypothesis should be taken with great caution. “A few papers talk about the subject, but they come from the same team, including a researcher based at NASA,” explains Lucile Bruhat. This hypothesis has never really been validated by other teams. It is very controversial. » The physical explanation of the phenomenon “is not verified at all by the Earth sciences community,” she continues.
When contacted, the geologist Serge Lallemand, research director at the CNRS, told us that he “knows nothing like this”, while specifying that he is not a specialist in this type of phenomenon. For Lucile Bruhat, this hypothesis cannot be applied to the earthquake that struck Morocco either. “We understand the idea of the electrical reaction if we are close to the surface,” she notes. But here, the problem is that we have an earthquake which happened 28 kilometers deep and which did not reach the surface. Whether particles pass through entire kilometers of rock almost instantaneously is open to debate. »
The earthquake, with a magnitude of 7 according to the Moroccan Center for Scientific and Technical Research (6.8 according to the American seismological service), is the most powerful to have ever been measured in Morocco. Its epicenter is located in the province of Al-Haouz, south of the tourist city of Marrakech, in the center of the kingdom.