Strange beams of light streaming from the earth in Maine

[NorthernSpy]

Here's something weird: on Thursday (Dec 13, 2007), Bangor police received a number of phone calls from area residents reporting bright beams of pale yellow light emanating from the earth. The Penobscott County Sheriff's office also received reports of an eerie reddish glow over northern Penobscott County.


The Bangor Daily News captured photographs of the phenomena:

Between 10 and 11 p.m. Thursday, Bangor police and Penobscot County sheriff dispatchers received several calls describing shafts of yellow and white light that extended from the ground to the sky. Additional sightings of an orange glow over northern Penobscot County also were reported.

A meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Caribou said there was no meteorological explanation for the lights.

This follows the brilliant orange fireballs seen over the Bay of Fundy three days earlier. Those lights, which were witnessed by viewers in extreme eastern Maine, were apparently caused by the breaking up of a rocket launched earlier that day from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Military officials say that there have been no launches since then that could account for Thursday's unexplained lights.


One professor of astronomy suggested a "slim but not negligible" possibility that frozen gasses from the rocket might be the cause of the phenomena seen Thursday night.

But beyond that conjecture, these latest lights seem to have no clear explanation.


So: what are they? Any guesses? Has anyone here ever seen anything like this?

[Teaser]

1. earth lights rock

.

[NorthernSpy]

24. I've been wondering about the possibility of an earthquake since suddenly waking up Monday night...

In the past week, there have been a couple of minor earthquakes in our region: the first in Quebec near Montreal on Monday, and the second in Maine near Brunswick on Tuesday.

It is said that strange lights can herald an outbreak of earthquakes. Something about the stresses in the rock causing a glow to emanate from the earth.


Late Monday night, I suddenly woke up with a strong feeling of unease. I could't tell whether I was feeling it or hearing it, but it seemed to me that there was some kind of very penetrating low-pitched "sound". I couldn't tell what it was, or where it was coming from. It just kind of was. It took me a couple of hours to get back to sleep.

I experienced something similar during a moderately strong earthquake that was felt throughout Maine in Oct, 2006. So on Tuesday I checked the USGS site, and sure enough, there had been a small earthquake in Quebec. On Tuesday, there was another small earthquake, this time in Maine's south Midcoast region.


I wonder: are stresses building up in the earth under Maine, and producing strange sounds and lights?

[Warpy]

27. New England earthquakes were funny

because people who are sensitive to them would drop their forks, get this weird look on their faces, "What the hell was THAT?" and then finish their dinners. The first one I felt was like a full gravel truck going down the street when I was standing on the sidewalk, only it was 3 AM and I was in my flat and there was no traffic moving anywhere during a snowstorm.

There was only one while I was there that sent people running out into the street, a 4.1 in Canada that got transmitted through the bedrock and made everything built on bedrock sway like crazy. There was no damage although I had one skein of yarn bounce off an overloaded shelf, but people knew what they were feeling.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out the weird glow preceded a typical New England earthquake. They happen up there much more often than most folks realize.

[NorthernSpy]

41. it seems the earth's crust is unusually resonant here...

... which is why seismic events can be felt over great distances, even if the quakes themselves are nothing special Richter scale-wise.

When that biggest earthquake of 2006 (4.2!) hit, I had that same "feeling of sound", but it didn't make me particularly uneasy at the time. Actually, it produced a sort of euphoria. It was spellbinding.

I only became uneasy later when I started worrying about the potential for bigger earthquakes.

[Maine-ah]

34. I'm in Rockland, and we never felt anything.

and this is the first I've heard of any of this. Very strange indeed.

[NorthernSpy]

48. you didn't feel the big quake last year?

:wow:


Bbbut it caused rockfalls in Acadia! It roused me from a nap! You'd think it would be pretty strong in Rockland.


It was like the earth was alive and waking up under our feet.

[Vanje]

2. Aurora borealis?

Northern lights

[NorthernSpy]

15. the aurora is visible in Maine, but this seems more "localized"...

The light beams emanated from the ground seemingly near the Bangor area, and the reddish glow appeared over a section of one county.

And the meteorologist interviewed by the paper couldn't account for this.


But some of this might be a similar kind of corona discharge phenomenon, so you might be on the right path.

[moez]

3. Friends of Dennis Kucinich coming for a visit? n/t

[OzarkDem]

5. Oops, wrong forum

I think you're looking for FR.

[ret5hd]

4. The grand opening of an Indian casino?

[SpiralHawk]

9. ROFLMAO

EVERYBODY SAY CHEESE

[Botany]

6. E.T. is here for the Clam Chowda and Lobsters

[IADEMO2004]

21. Would you trade a bowl of choda for a just out of the oven rye bread?

I was in Maine in 2002 and make a pig of myself on those two menu items.

[NMDemDist2]

7. what pictures? n/t

[NorthernSpy]

18. a photo of this is definitely in the print version of the paper...

... 'cause I'm looking right at it. But I guess they're not putting them in the online version.

Sorry about that. I'll post a link to a photo as soon as I find one.

[China_cat]

8. Stephen King trying out ideas for a new book?

[Donnachaidh]

10. Stephen King still live near Bangor?

It's the DEADLIGHTS, dude! :rofl:

[MuseRider]

17. Damn you beat me to it! n/t

[livvy]

11. I knew all this damn drilling we've been doing would not end well.

Now we've got a leak. Where's that little Dutch kid? We've got a job for him.

[theHandpuppet]

12. Cheney turning on the lights before emerging from his hidey-hole?

Is Darth Cheney having another tryst with a naked mole rat?

[Puckster]

13. It's the Tommyknockers, ya'll!

You know, Stephen King live up there somewhere. Break out yer tinfoil hats if you live near there!

[TBreeze]

50. Tommyknockers

That's the first thing I thought of. :rofl:

[alfredo]

14. found the cause

http://youtube.com/watch?v=yZyLGi0DfEw&feature=related

[Countdown_3_2_1]

16. Earth Defense Force vs RODAN!

[Bitwit1234]

19. The video did not work

[NorthernSpy]

26. apparently, the paper put the photo in their print version only...

I'll post a link to an online photo of this as soon as I find one. Sorry about that.


(I have the print version with the photo right here on my desk.)

[JohnnyLib2]

20. Quick, call Pat Roberson!

This could be it, end times.

[nealmhughes]

22. New tablets that Mormon's grandson left? The light is the salamander guarding them.

Kids with a spotlight? We used to set off garbage bags filled with Hydrogen gas and tied to a tail of lit soaked kerosene rag off the roof of the turbine building when I worked at the Shoreham Nuclear Power Station on the North Shore of Long Island, directly across the water from New Haven, then listen to the New Haven AM radio stations to hear all the UFO reports called in from those who were looking up at the Sound!

My friend Joe and I on a bit of a rip made a Batman logo out of cardboard and tinfoil and lit it up skyward in the middle of the city one night when the power was out from high winds. We knew that spotlight on his truck would come in handy one day!

[NorthernSpy]

31. the photo in the (print version of) the paper shows several...

... (maybe eight or nine) vertical columns of light superimposed on a glowing horizon. The beams vary in their brightness and in their apparent distance from each other. They trail up through the orange glow, and the glow and beams fade together into black night.

In the foreground, there's a dark fence, and a dark landscape seen in silhouette against the orange glow.


At the base of some of the beams, there are large whitish gold bight spots, and the bightest of these (the one furthest to righthand edge of the photo) seems to be surrounded by a glowing halo in addition to the beam of light streaming upwards from it.


It's hard to judge distances from this photo, but the seem appear to emanate from spots that might be thousands of feet apart.


Even if some well-organized kids could account for the beams, what accounts for the big orange glow? Northern Penobscot County is a huge swath of territory, and it's just about all uninhabited forest.

[NorthernSpy]

46. ur, I apologize for all the typos in that post...

They were all totally invisible to me until the editing period was up.


:blush:

[Tesha]

23. There have been studies that have shown that before an earthquake ....

There have been studies that have shown that before
an earthquake the earth emits infrared and perhaps
visible light. At this point, there's some hope that
satellite imagery of this effect could predict earth-
quakes. IIRC, it's actually believed to be a piezo-
electric effect.

If you want to Google for it, I'm pretty sure I
read about it in New Scientist magazine
within the last year.

Tesha

[NorthernSpy]

25. well, that's certainly a possibility...

Thanks for the info! Earthquake lights are definitely a possible explanation.

Some people have wondered whether a new fault might be forming under the sea near Acadia. There's already a big fault that runs North-South down the bottom of the Atlantic. Apparently, it's spreading and pushing on North America (IIRC).

[alfredo]

29. fun experiment. Find those sugar cubes that are rectangular then

take on in a pitch black room. Break it and look for a flash of blue light. It might work with the square ones and a pair of pliers.

[Tesha]

53. Wintergreen lifesavers are famous for this as well; crunch them in the dark!

It's also fun to unroll masking tape (maybe "Scotch
tape" too) slowly in a dark room; at the parting point
(where the tape leaves the roll), you'll observe a steady
blue glow as long as tape is unrolling.

In this case, it's due to static electricity.

Tesha

[alfredo]

54. I forgot about Wintergreen lifesavers.

I'll try the tape trick. I wonder if Duct tape will do the same.

[Tesha]

57. Duct tape tends to be "too sticky" so it unrolls in bursts.

With masking tape, it's easy to pull a nice, steady
stream of tape off the roll at a pretty slow pace
(say a couple of inches per second). The non-blue
masking tape is also translucent, allowing you to
more-easily see the phenomenon.

Maybe I'll try "Scotch tape" later and report back;
if it works at all, it ought to provide the best
viewing ;).

Tesha

[alfredo]

59. Are we becoming geeks?

[Tesha]

64. In my case, I'm not sure there's any "becoming" about it...

> Are we becoming geeks?

In my case, I'm not sure there's any "becoming" about it
although Mr. Tesha does seem to find it "becoming".

Tesha

[alfredo]

66. I did have a slide rule when I was a kid. I guess I am a geek.

[GreenPartyVoter]

28. I saw the rocket, though at the time I thought it was a shooting star. Haven't

seen any earth lights but then I am in a different county.

[NorthernSpy]

32. I missed 'em both, plus I can't even spell "Penobscot" right...

:blush:

[GreenPartyVoter]

52. LOL It's all good

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

30. Signals to Elvis that his gig at the Penobscott Bowling Alley has been cancelled?

[Kucinich4America]

33. How close is this to Kennebunkport?

Might be the Romulan war ship coming to take Poppy back home.

[tomreedtoon]

35. Great Cthulhu is coming back!

I always thought the people at sci-fi conventions were just making mockery of Christianity when they talked about The Great Old Ones coming back. But they were right!

[frylock]

36. my thoughts as well!

:rofl:

[supernova]

37. I wanna see! I wanna see!

We can has litz pics pls?

[NorthernSpy]

44. soon as I can find the picture online, I'll show it to you...

Actually, I could show you the photo from the paper if I could find a usable Linux driver for my scanner, dammit. That's the only piece of hardware I have that I just can't get to play nice with my OS.

x(


Or maybe someone else here who gets the BDN could scan it for us? That would be nice.

[QC]

38. Satan is coming to Kennebunkport to claim his son and heir. n/t

[Bright Eyes]

39. Perhaps its the Mole People?

"There is no escape from the fortress of the Moles!"

[Breeze54]

40. "There's gold in them thar hills and I aim to get some!"

[DFW]

42. An orange glow? Linus was right!!

The Great Pumpkin is coming at long last!!

[jpak]

43. I saw these - my brother thought Comet Holmes had split

http://www.njherald.com/323410352055175.php

It looked just like a comet - nucleus, tail and everything very near the comet (which is visible with binoculars).

But it disappeared in a few minutes...

(cue spooky theremin music)

[NorthernSpy]

45. cool!

Your brother is so lucky! It must have been an awesome sight.

[jpak]

47. He called the UMO Astronomy Dept and they laughed at him (seriously)

Don't think they are laughing now...

[NorthernSpy]

49. something similar happened this past February in Skowhegan...

This article ran in the Lewiston Sun Journal:

Wednesday, February 14, 2007-FARMINGTON - Strange lights with no obvious cause were spotted all over northern Franklin County Tuesday night, Sheriff's Department dispatchers said.

"The phone was ringing off the hook," dispatcher Bill Hoyt said.

Multiple callers from multiple towns - New Vineyard, Wilton, Phillips, Industry, and around Mt. Abram - called to report bizarre, low-to-the-ground lights, he said.

"They were seeing, basically, a string of seven or eight lights low in the sky, that were fixed," he said. "There (were) also reports of jet engine noise low to the ground." One person who called worked with jet airplanes, Hoyt said. "They were not like any lights he had ever seen." Some people said they looked like stars.

The article goes on to say that the only flights in the area that night were two jets that passed over at ~40,000 feet.


http://www.ufocasebook.com/oddlights.html

:shrug:



Skowhegan is in Somerset County, which borders Penobscot County (the site of the most recent light phenomena).

[rug]

51. GHWB has taken up trepanation.

[Swamp Rat]

55. THEY are contacting the mothership!

:yoiks:

[Blue_Tires]

56. ttt

[dbt]

58. Ah, another legitimate question derailed* by comedians.

This MUST be DU. Can't have anything here that might make "us" look kooky, doncha know!

*In utter contravention of The Rules, but what ELSE is new around here?

:rofl:

[Desertrose]

65. you rascal you.....

:popcorn:
Must be a slow day....


:loveya: :hi: :hug: :loveya: :loveya:
DR

[Beelzebud]

60. The U.S.S. Eldridge is coming home!!!

[MindPilot]

61. I wonder how many will get THAT reference!!

And for you students of Tesla -- scalar waves!!

[dbt]

62. And for the HAARP watchers,

MORE Scalar Waves.

For the DU Enablers, just KIDDING. Nothing to see here, move along.

:evilgrin:

[donsu]

63. don't know about lights but the earth 'gongs' 69 times a day

"The cavity formed between a planetary body and its ionasphere acts as a natural resonator; most people who lived on Earth were unaware that they lived on a gigantic gong that boomed out exactly sixty-none times every day."

from the novel Ammonite by Nicola Griffith