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The question of the Sun's possible role in triggering large earthquakes
is the subject of growing scientific interests.
For decades, some have noted a parent correlations
between dramatic solar phenomena and seismic activity.
Yet definitive scientific proof of a connection has remained elusive.
Recently, the founder of Suspicious Observers Ben Davidson and colleagues
published a landmark scientific paper revealing compelling statistical evidence
of a role of solar activity in triggering large earthquakes.
We asked Ben to give us the latest developments in his research
as well as a brief preview of its forthcoming talk
at the Thunderbolts conference Elegant Simplicity
taking place June 17th to 19th in Phoenix in Arizona.
The foundations for investigating solar triggered earthquakes
were really a number of coincidences that really just stood out among
what seemed like otherwise random data
and suggested that solar phenomenon could trigger earthquakes.
Now to just look at sunspots solar flares or even its effects on Earth
you look at the geomagnetic index, how many geomagnetic storms is it producing
what level, things like that. Those are the main
things people look at when they're looking at space weathering solar phenomena
and that's where a lot of the odd coincidences can be found
but that's not where, you know, that's not where you're going to find any patterns,
it seems like sometimes you can use those things to predict earthquakes very well
and correlate a, you know, find a relationship between the Earth and the Sun
and then other times it appears not to be the case.
And so there's that question of why does there appear to be this on off switch, sometimes
weeks at a time, sometimes months at a time on and then off or, you know, weeks on or off.
And so we started to look beyond solar flares and sunspots and things like that
because we really see all of these things as symptoms
really, of something else that's happening
and that is a polar magnetic field cycle on the Sun.
This would be the solar polar fields that come out of the polar regions of the Sun
and wrap around, you know, towards the equator
and pretty much encompass the entire solar system
coming out of the Sun's poles just like Earth's magnetosphere comes out of Earth's poles.
Well this solar polar field cycle, which is the 11 year cycle,
when it reverses is when we get the sunspot maximum
and all the flares and things like that.
Well not only are sunspots and solar flares
and the resulting geomagnetic activity at Earth
a function of this 11 year solar polar field cycle
but even things like the placement of coronal holes,
sector boundaries in the heliosphere, current sheath, basically the
the magnetic character of the solar wind,
the size and the position of the solar prominences, often referred to as plasma filaments,
all of these things are actually driven
by this underlying 11 year solar polar field cycle
that is often ascribed to being 11 year sun spots cycle
but really it's it's the magnetic fields on the Sun that are really driving that.
And when you look beyond the symptoms like sunspots and solar flares
and geomagnetic activity to the underlying thing that is driving
all of those things, the solar polar magnetic fields,
you come to something that has never once been analyzed in terms of earthquakes until now
and when it is analyzed you find that this is so perfect
of a, of a place to start this the sort of new field of science
that it really can't be ignored.
Somewhere between 88 and 90% of the largest earthquakes in the world are
shockingly close to these polar magnetic field cycle events
and so basically what I mean by that is during the 11 years
that the cycle takes place we get peaks in this magnetism,
the high points in the magnetism about twice a year or about 6 months apart.
We get reversals, positive to negative, negative to positive, about every 11 years.
These things do not exactly happen all the time, they're spread far apart
and yet most of the major earthquakes on the list are within just a handful of
days of these events that happened 6 months to years and years apart
and we have now completed our forth study on this material
the first one was published last year that was between myself, Dr Kongpop U-Yen,
who many in the EU community know already,
and Dr. Chris Holloman, a statistics professor from The Ohio State University
who actually, I was able to take the pattern that we all were pretty sure we saw,
translated into mathematics and actually proved that it was real.
Well since then we've done subsequent analyses on...
on the Chile 8.3 in September of 2015
we did a more longer-term analysis of the solar polar fields just earlier,
earlier this spring, and just in the last couple of days
the data has updated enough to show us that the first great earthquake of 2016
the magnitude 7.8 that struck off the coast of Indonesia on March 2nd 2016
was indeed occurring at a negative peak in solar polar field magnetism
and it was a peak that actually had not been matched on the Sun for 15 years
so that's another way of saying that as the Sun, you know,
presents these different levels of magnetism,
the Sun had not presented Earth with this level of magnetism since 2001
at least in terms of the negative polarity.
And it does appear, now that we've gotten a little bit past that mark's second event,
that it was indeed a peak in the fields cause since then the
the total magnetic field strength of the Sun has been weakening somewhat
so that was a a long-term event and a short-term significant event as well.
And it's looking like, based on the limited data we have thus far,
this big one we just had in Ecuador about a week and a half ago,
which was on the heels of that deadly earthquake in Japan,
they happened just 24 hours apart,
it's looking like we're gonna have another peak there as well so
we also just had the word come in that that first paper,
the foundational one with myself, Dr. U-Yen and the Dr. Hollomon
got its first citation, it was cited in a paper that was published late in 2015
also talking about solar system phenomena and earthquakes.
So what's, it really sort of came out of the coincidences that
seemed to hint, that Sun creates earthquakes
but guided by all of the very convincing research that says, hey
you can't use sun spots you can't use solar flares
you can't use geomagnetic activity over long periods of time,
here is the data. Therefore we have to conclude that there is no solar induced earthquakes.
Well, when you use that as your guide and you realize
that all the things they're looking at are really just symptoms
of the more driving, underlying force on the Sun,
you begin to realize how this could have been missed over the last few decades
and just how vital this can be when you see how,
how well correlated the Sun is with these large
oftentimes tsunami- inducing earthquakes.
Once you've nailed down, using solar phenomena,
the times when the Earth should get more active,
you then need to be wondering where this activity is most likely to strike,
where's this earthquake gonna happen
and the single most promising thing we've ever seen
came out of the Demeter satellite. I believe t'was a French satellite
and it was detecting ionosphere disruptions
that seem to occur before some of the largest earthquakes.
Now some scientists have written these off, others have been using them
to try to create an earthquake forecasting system.
The problem is that for all the times that this Demeter data
a couple, you know, at least a dozen for all the times it was used
to publish papers on ionosphere disruptions before earthquakes,
it was never once used to communicate such a disruption to the world
as hey, watch out, an earthquake may happen here.
A lot of this stems out of what happened in Italy with the earthquake scientists,
a lot of folks are worried about, you know, liability with things like that
and as of now there are some promising ideas in terms of looking at the ionosphere
but they're in their infancy.
What may be a better thing to do is what actually I'm trying to do right now.
Many folks who are listening to this will know that we successfully completed
our second Kickstarter campaign earlier this year,
we've raised $120,000 to create the disaster prediction app,
and that is going to do two things.
One, it's going to be using those space weather phenomena we described earlier
to warn of times when Earth is going to get more active
but also we're going to be tracking the data that comes in on the GPS,
the magnetometer and on the EMF monitor within most of these cell phones,
iPhones have all those and many Androids do as well.
And so what we're going to be able to do is, we're going to be able to see
when there are multiple signals from different cell phones in a given area
that are showing the same type of anomaly.
Maybe there's ten different cell phones in Los Angeles
and all of a sudden their GPS says they're in the Pacific ocean.
What are the chances that all ten got catapulted thousand miles west at the same time.
Or perhaps there is a magnetic field disruption
of a certain micro-Tesla that's read by 20 cell phones in Seattle,
what are the chances they're all standing next to the exact same microwave with the door open.
There are things like this where you start to say okay, we can use some of these signals
because it's more than just the ionosphere, we've seen everything from
animal behavior going wild to positive ion emission prior to earthquakes
but also radio frequencies emerging and, sort of, spiking in power.
You've seen magnetic field disruptions as well and you've seen GPS disruptions,
just about every phone has a GPS detector in it as well.
So what we're hoping to do is not wait to install a bunch of very expensive machines
all over the world that may have to be recalibrated if they get hit by lightning or something,
we are going to actually have this at monitoring some of the electromagnetic conditions
around the globe around these areas and hopefully
there will be enough people with these things on their cell phones
that will be able to get some concrete data and actually start to be able to predict locations.
So looking at the different electromagnetic signals
and that really is the only way to do this,
electricity is the great snitch of the universe
she's gonna tell us pretty much everything that's going to happen
we just have to learn how to listen the right way.
In June this year I'll be giving another talk, third year in a row,
at the Electric Universe conference in Phoenix
and this year it's going to be a little less specific and a little bit more
macro view of a lot of the things that are going on in the community
and a lot of the paths forward that seem to be most promising.
We have, on the horizon, a period of great change as some of our leaders
will be looking to others to carry this story forward as we look twenty, thirty years down the line
and so what does the future of the Electric Universe look like,
and hopefully I'll be able to convince everyone that it is a promising future
from a vastly interdisciplinary field of view,
talking about a very broad range of disciplines, a very broad range of interests
that are going to end up being advanced and coming around to really embrace
some of the electric ideas that have been tossed around in the community the last few years.
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