'Ghost' That Haunts South Carolina Rail Line May Be Caused By Tiny Earthquakes (science.org) 37
sciencehabit shares a report from Science: Legend has it that if you walk along Old Light Road in Summerville, South Carolina, you might see an eerie glow hovering over an abandoned rail line in the nearby woods. Old-timers will tell you it's a spectral lantern held by the apparition of a woman searching for her decapitated husband's head. Susan Hough has proposed a scientific explanation that is far more plausible, however. A seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, she believes the so-called Summerville Light could represent a rare natural phenomenon: earthquake lights.
Sparks from steel rail tracks could ignite radon or other gases released from the ground by seismic shaking, Hough explains in an interview with Science. In Summerville, I think it's the railroad tracks that matter. I've crawled around tracks during my fieldwork in South Carolina. Historically, when [rail companies] replaced tracks, they didn't always haul the old track away. So, you've got heaps of steel out there. Sparks might be part of the story. And maybe the railroads are important for another reason. They may naturally follow fault lines that have carved corridors through the landscape. The findings have been published in the journal Seismological Research Letters. Hough also cites a paper published by Japanese scientist Yuji Enomoto that connects earthquake lights to the release of gases like radon or methane.
Sparks from steel rail tracks could ignite radon or other gases released from the ground by seismic shaking, Hough explains in an interview with Science. In Summerville, I think it's the railroad tracks that matter. I've crawled around tracks during my fieldwork in South Carolina. Historically, when [rail companies] replaced tracks, they didn't always haul the old track away. So, you've got heaps of steel out there. Sparks might be part of the story. And maybe the railroads are important for another reason. They may naturally follow fault lines that have carved corridors through the landscape. The findings have been published in the journal Seismological Research Letters. Hough also cites a paper published by Japanese scientist Yuji Enomoto that connects earthquake lights to the release of gases like radon or methane.
Sparks from steel rail tracks could ignite radon (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be very tricky. Radon is a noble gas, it isn't going to burn.
(it is radioactive, but doesn't glow)
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I thought 'earthquake lights' were caused be piezoelectric effect.
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Earthquake light
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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It's a totally nonsensical pseudoscience nonsense theory. The more logical conclusion is that people see ghosts there because there's ghost wandering around there. Everyone knows the ethereal plane and physical plane overlap each other, maybe the earthquakes loosen things up a bit.
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So what you are saying is that ghosts are lighting their farts? They are a sneaky bunch.
Re: Idiots (Score:3)
"Don't tell that to the idiot authors and editors who apparently failed high school chemistry."
This is Slashdot. The editors will never explain why they insist on filling it with idiotic drivel. Apparently the goal is not a return to when the site was famous because editorial conduct amounts to systemic sabotage.
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In this case, that is taken from the www.science.org article. So, not totally /. editors fault as they prepare a summary.
But that will be one less periodical that I rely upon for information.
Re:Sparks from steel rail tracks could ignite rado (Score:5, Informative)
And this kids is why you don't let kids do science. Especially based on less than stellar science reporting. You look like an idiot to people who know the real science.
It's quite obvious that the author doing the reporting is... not great at their job. It's also quite obvious that the scientist was referring to the METHANE talked about in the same sentence being able to be ignited.
It's also equally obvious to people even remotely versed in the science, or can be bothered to read the paper linked from the Japanese scientists that radon in saturated air, like oh I don't know, night time in fucking South Carolina, excites water and other molecules in the air with gamma decay even at low concentrations. Excitation causing wait for it, blue, white, and orange red glows visible from sub 150 feet above surface terrain, depending on upwelling and concentrations. This is supported both by numerical modeling AND laboratory testing. The paper even gives away the radon transport paths, if you bother to read.
Re:Sparks from steel rail tracks could ignite rado (Score:5, Interesting)
Came here to say the same thing, the person reporting it is listed as an international correspondent rather than a scientist and is doing a less than stellar job of reporting the story. He asks about radon and she replies referring to methane, but then he captions the photo next to the text as "Seismologist Susan Hough, [...] avers that sparks from steel rail tracks could ignite radon or other gases [...]".
It's a pretty mixed bag, I've been interviewed by journalists who I thought were just random reporters but who proved remarkably knowledgeable about the topic, but then also been annoyingly misquoted at other times. If they really know their stuff then you'll usually get a hint, hopefully near the start, that this is the case from some of the things they ask.
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According to wikipedia a few radon compounds are possible, including radon trixode (RnO3).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
(not that I'm saying this is or isn't the cause of the Carolina ghosts, of course)
Radon is not flammable (Score:3)
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I'm guessing you're referring to radon "daughters" (or sometimes "progeny").
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjc/s10052-021-09047-2/figures/1/ [springer.com]
And how do we know... (Score:5, Funny)
More plausible (Score:3)
Shaken rail piles can't move fast enough to spark (Score:3)
Rails don't spark even when dropped on each other while stacking scrap. It takes "wheel slip" (skidding induced by braking or acceleration of locos and rolling stock) to manage that with MUCH greater point loads and interface speeds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Rails jumpering large earth voltage gradients. (Score:4, Interesting)
Rails don't spark even when dropped on each other while stacking scrap. It takes "wheel slip" (skidding induced by braking or acceleration of locos and rolling stock) to manage that with MUCH greater point loads and interface speeds.
Seems to me we should be looking, not for mechanical, but for electrical, sparks.
Earthquakes release massive underground pressures on rocks (as well as applying such pressures to others in the form of acoustic waves). Some of those rocks are quartz deposits, which are piezoelectric: Changes of pressure create hysterical voltages across a quartz crystal. Even at fractional-inch scales and pressure changes from a lever and striker you're talking voltages that can jump a short spark in a spark plug or gas lighter.
Granted an underground quartz deposit won't have the crystals all alligned so the voltages add up. But the pressure changes are high enough that even throwing rock sized crystals might produce multi-kilovolt spikes, and even a slight tendency for rocks' crystal structures to be oriented similarly could make voltages tend to add somewhat for miles, generating voltages comparable to a thundercloud. Meanwhile, the energy available is comparable to a large nuclear bomb.
With voltages like that occurring along the ground, a train track rail sitting on the ground - with a resistance between the rail and the ground measured in fractions of an ohm - might short across a substantial ground potential. This would focus the voltage (that would have been distributed along the rail path) at the end discontinuities of the rail - where it actually ends, makes a turn, or has an electrical gap (like a block-signal insulated joint, or the open side of a rail routing swich). This could result in a lightning-like spark on the scale of feet.
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Even at fractional-inch scales and pressure changes from a lever and striker ...
Sorry. Just from a lever. The "striking" feeling in a piezo-electrical igniter is the result of a sudden release of back-pressure when the voltage across the quartz crystal is suddenly discharged by the spark, letting the crystal shrink slightly along the direction it's being compressed.
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Actually the "strike" is from a small "hammer" mechanism being slammed into the piezoelectric crystal by pressure released from a spring.
This video shows it well: https://youtu.be/Tbjc19Z89ic?t... [youtu.be]
Alternate Explanation... (Score:3)
Sparks from steel rail tracks could ignite radon or other gases released from the ground by seismic shaking [...]
Or it could be that swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and refracted the light from Venus.
No such thing (Score:2)
No such thing as ghosts. Not saying that the lights are caused by aliens ... but it's aliens.
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Doh! You win!
Radon is inert and scrap steel is worth money (Score:1)
so not only did leftover rails not ignite the radon, there was never any leftover rails there at all. Spooky.
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Re: Radon is inert and scrap steel is worth money (Score:2)
I used to walk the tracks in Santa Cruz as I grew up with a single parent with no car, and there were piles of rail there for years until the railroad picked them up. They are extremely inconvenient to move and not trivial to cut, and were located nowhere near a crossing.
Yes, and I'd have gotten away with it too... (Score:3)
The word MAY may be often abused (Score:2)
It's sad when Science.org uses the word "May" to mean "Could or could not be." Everything in the world is that way. It MAY rain today or it MAY NOT rain today. The sentence is without meaning and certainly embodies no scientific method principles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There's no hypothesis, no proof, no peer review, no repeatability, and no ability to elicit a principle or a law from it.
I may be wrong here. Of course I may be right. Either way the word "may" has no business in a headline o
"Sparks from steel rail tracks could ignite radon" (Score:1)
Don't put tracks near the Dead Marshes (Score:2)