Now I have this idea about the mechanism:
Rain moistens the ground. That effect is related to reduction of resistance of the earth-to-air connection.
Thunderstorms or equivalent cause a closed loop of current. That loop acts like e solenoid to some disturbance of the magnetic field around the earth.
There is a self-inductive effect, once the current is cut. That would concentrate the em-force to a certain region within the earth.
Material in that region gets an impact of stress. That tension releases after a while and causes a quake.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_electricity

http://www.auf.asn.au/meteorology/section11.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_function
http://ae.nsstc.uah.edu/
http://megagalerias.terra.cl/galeria..._galeria=30734

The idea behind this is, that you could treat in a way the em-force as the inverse of gravity. So an high impact of an electromagnetic field could cause gravitating effects, hence could introduce stress to any kind of material.

Thomas Heger

Maybe some sentences that make sense?

And how did you get to this insight? What do you mean with an element, and why should they be spheres?
If I change direction I changes the signs? The signs of WHAT? Could you please give all the information, and not just meaningless sentences?
Naturally, if I turn right it is in opposite direction then when I turn left, but I am sure you don't mean that, explain explain explain and not through your googledoc, but just in plain understandable english.
What is an even rotation and what is an uneven rotation, and why on Earth would we call that heat?

Yes, I guess you can describe a rotation by multiplying complex numbers. A normal rotation (oh frag no, now I am going to do it, I am going to show math, whereas that would have been your job, to explain it to the readers here), okay a rotation over θ around the origin goes through a matrix (simply keep 2 D here AND just normal notation, no quaternions)

where you can debate about the minus sign (math and physics determine positive rotations oppositely). And then you can naturally express the sin or cos into complex exponentials. Indeed, you might even go as far, if you go into complex numbers that you can only use exp(iθ) and its complex conjugate, but then you have to beware to set up your coordinate system correctly, so the vector (x, y) which you want to rotate around the origin will have to be put together into the complex number x+iy (and its complex conjugate), which you can then express in R exp(i φ), where R = sqrt(x² + y²) and φ = atan(y/x). So then, the rotation takes the shape of exp(iθ) * R exp(i φ).

So, this is pretty standard, however, from what I have seen from quaternions, this makes stuff even more complicated, using three different "perpendicular imaginary" directions (i, j, k), and from what I have seen yawyaw write down here, I just complicates stuff and no new insights are shown, but maybe I should look at a real book on this topic.

So my objection to quaternions is that it just complicates stuff.


If you would have read carefully I said: "I'd love to see you" (albeit that I'd had a typo in it and it looked like I't, but I am sure you can understand)

But I guess you ran out of links? Somehow I totally do not understand this answer, I said I would like to know how you calculate the distance of a falling object without integration, a rather straightforward question, and I get .... word salat (I'll take it without dressing, thank you).

I can't tell you what the matrix is, you have to see it for yourself.
A pea has three degrees of freedom, as it is in 3 space.
What is with rotation? I guess quaternions are all about rotation somehow, but your examples with peas are starting to become silly.
Spacelike behaviour is that neighbours block, HUH? You really need to work on your presentation skills here. And then it becomes timelike in spacetime because time is imaginary? Time is as real as space, only in the covariant notation of 4space it is opportune to write the fourth component as imaginary.

Then the next part, okay, space has 3 axis (agree) and I can have any path through space (agree), but what kind of equivalent principle are you invoking here? And what kind of behaviour are you hinting at? I guess the blocking by neighbours or something of that kind. Totally unclear.

And then something about interaction (we do not get told what kind of interaction) with a neighbour left and right (we have not defined what is left and what is right) and then the quaternion needs to be used or its inverse, well I guess, I breath, I try to imagine, and then I need a drink, no, does not compute.

But why are we discussing this anyway? I guess because I made a remark about quaternions (silly me). We should concentrate on this electric earthquake.

Oh, now you are just playing the "oh poor me, I wazzend edumacated" card, been there done that, you decided to play with the "big boys". We are not obliged to go to external sources to get our info from you, you need to present it clearly here on the board, and I am sure that, forgetting the peas, you might be able to write some text explaining your model for earthquakes. And please in normal physics, not in quaternions.

__________________
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Optimism does not change the laws of physics. (T'Pol)
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is. (Dao De Jing 27)
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Martin ( http://www.geocities.com/DrMartinV )

Thomas please stop making your point with loads of urls, and put the stuff in your own words. You don't seem to understand some of the stuff that you are talking about.

Lightning is the discharge of a charge collected on clouds to an induced opposite charge on the surface of the Earth. Then when the situation is favourable, i.e. when the electric field is strong enough a discharge can happen. Apparently, there is a precursor, which moves from the ground to the cloud, which we do not see visibly, preparing an ionized channel for the discharge to take place (this may be a bit outdated, maybe new info on the precursor is known, I have no time now to find papers). With this channel in place, the charge difference between the surface and the cloud is equalized through the lightning bolt that we clearly can see visibly. The whole process takes place in a very limited space, no large scale big *** current systems are involved.

What you want is a solenoid, like you said in your OP, in which, somehow (by the sun?) a current is induced. Now, the first problem is here, if a current is induced in this solenoid, then there is already magnetic activity, so this means that the current cannot be induced in the solenoid, but needs to be driven by an electromotive force.

Suppose that this big *** solenoid is there (just for the sake of argument). Then we need somehow a potential difference, a battery, somewhere. Where would you like to place that? Now, there is of course an atmospheric electric field, which is about 100 V/m, but this would work on both sides of the soleniod, so that cannot generate a current. So, then what can play battery in this solenoid? I have no idea, so, I guess that the first point is for you thomheg to tell us what you think the battery is.

Then, besides that, the magnetic field of a solenoid is rather easy to calculate. And thus, you might calculate the magnetic field that is necessary to have some effect on the tektonic plates. Don't know what you would like here, but give it a try.

So, you don't need all this stuff of rain etc. (as I hinted before, rain can create earthquakes or can prevent them, this from your own liks to the german wissenschaft.de pages, which I have read, I am basically fluent in German)

Well, I am looking forward to your ideas about how and what, but they will need to be at least at OOM (Order Of Magnitude) estimates of what one could expect, which means you need to come up with some reasonable numbers. We get people enough here on the board that say "but what if A would do B and finally cause C" with just words and hints and in the end we end up with nothing. Therefore, we insist that people use math (the sort that other people can understand) and show what they want to do.

Servus aus Graz

__________________
************************************************** *************************
Optimism does not change the laws of physics. (T'Pol)
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is. (Dao De Jing 27)
************************************************** *************************
Martin ( http://www.geocities.com/DrMartinV )

Back home in Los Angeles, we refer to hot, dry weather as "earthquake weather." And, since LA's a desert, there's not a lot of rain in the first place.

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Why don't you tell us. That's how it's supposed to work.

__________________
'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

I did think about the possibility, and checked it before making my post. I determined based on my knowledge of physics that it is impossible. Therefore, no I did not say it is impossible just because I "think" it is impossible, I said it is impossible because I know it is impossible. I choose fact & knowledge over "loose opinions".

No that is not "all you have heard". There is a considerable difference between the idea that electric currents cause earthquakes, and the idea that electromagnetic forces 'influence" the earth. The former is impossible, while the latter is obviously correct. Of course electromagnetic forces "influence" the earth, that is not news. So make up your mind. Is it "influence the earth" or "cause earthquakes" or both?

No there is not.

Actually, it makes plenty of sense, if you choose fact & knowledge over "loose ideas". I have already posted links to papers that discuss in detail why it makes sense. You, on the other hand, have yet to show that it makes any sense at all for electric currents to cause earthquakes.

__________________
Don't try this at home - We're what you call "professionals" - MythBusters.

I use a model for GR and make spacetime 'real'.
General relativity says, that all kind kinds of reference frames are of equal rights (the equivalence principle).
Now I straighten the world-line of an arbitrary observer and arrange the space he would observe in respect to that as 'sheets' and stack them to a cube. I make the time-axis real and space-axes imaginary. What I've got is in fact a four dimensional space of complex numbers (but three would be easier to draw). A Lorentz transform in that picture would be an angle.
This world-line is assumed to be the center of a light cone relative to that special reference frame. This is my special way to express GR and I assume, that this space is that of quaternions. Since it's based on intervals, it is possible to deform spacetime in a way, that the word-line of a free falling body is straight (others would be curved!).
Our observations should be, what we make out of that. So I encode spacetime into a geometric version of the space of quaternions (what are not real and not geometric).
The reason for this is, that otherwise I could not draw the relations. So all I say is based on the assumption, that spacetime is build out 'elements', that are, thou imaginary, real 'things'. I call that elements, to give it a name.
It is based on a continuum, but there are things, you could call elements. That is a hypersphere, that is build in a specific way: related to an arbitrary observer, there is a full turn of something. It can be modeled in all directions hence form a hypersphere. That is the geometric version of the number h. This is roughly the set-up of my model of spacetime.

TH

The quaternions form an antisymmetric space. If you change the direction, than the signs flip, left means - say- minus, then right means plus. Behind means earlier and in front means later. This is why I say, that our world is the observation of something imaginary, that shows all features that quaternions have.
The signature of the metric is +---. That is a scalar and a vector. But you can rotate the whole thing if you don't give a signature to the quaternion and use a form with pure (meaningless) numbers. Than it has no signature and it's just a kind of vector, that you cannot add, but have to multiply. Any observer turn this into his own observation by putting his own signature on the quaternions and 'cut' spacetime into space and time.

TH

If you get familiar with my terminology, than you could understand what I want to express. A series of those elements is something like a state. All of these Quaternions have an amplitude. That is simply the pointing of the vector part. The observer itself 'moves', so the amplitudes rotate. If that rotation has an axis parallel to the observer and is distributed evenly over space, that can't be seen. Usually we call such a state vacuum.
If you let the axis bent randomly in respect to each other, than we call that heat.


You seem to demand a mathematical model. But that's simply unfair. Of cause I want that, but it would require the multiplicative equivalent to calculus. I've not yet found that and developing it on my own is well beyond my possibilities. There are some attempts in this direction. Some are performed in this forum (that's how I've found it).
I asked several people for help, but didn't got any. Maybe you can and I can tell you, what I'm looking for.Of cause I know that. And there are Dirac matrices, that have a relation to quaternions.
For now I've got only words and drawings to express my idea. But that ain't nothing.

Thomas Heger

What you in fact do, is putting knowledge above observations. There are relations between earthquakes and phenomena known to be related to electricity. That are elms fires, polar lights and thunderstorms. Those phenomena occurred before earthquakes or together with them. Rain would fit into such a pattern, because it would influence conductivity.
So it would be obviously necessary to check the kind of relation.

It was only a guess. The mechanism could be quite complicated, but there seems to be a relation. The details I don't know. How could I? You say it is not possible. Since you represent in some way current knowledge, that current knowledge has to be extended. But maybe not by me. I could only give a hint, that those phenomena look quite 'electric' and how that would make sense.
The idea of plate tectonic is not obviously true. It's a model and I guess it's wrong. There are reasons to think so and one is the 'growing earth' hypothesis, what I guess is right. But that's 'weird' physics and I don't want to base my arguments on that kind of stuff, so I made them a bit easier to grasp. The real thing is far 'weirder' and you'd definitely wont believe that.

Thomas Heger

That is not the equivalence principle. I suggested before that you look it up, and my suggestion still stands.

That is NOT the equivalence principle!!!!!!!!!!!! My goodness if you don't even know the basics, how do you want to explain us a complicated new theory? And I see that your idea of creating "a new physics" is by making time "real" and space "imaginary", that is basically multiplying "normal 4 space notation (e.g. (x, y, z, ict) at the four vector for a point in four space)" by i = sqrt(-1). Well, I don't see that that is going to do a whole lot.

Maybe you should use regular terminology that is used in every basic physics book.
What do you mean by "the pointing" do you mean the direction here or do you mean to say "Poynting" which has something to do with energy flow?
"The amplitudes rotate", I think that even in quaternion physics there is no such thing as amplitudes rotating, unless quaternion phyisics mean something else by amplitude than just a scalar number.

'squuze me, thomheg I am just asking you for the basics, which you obviously do not understand, because one can get better information looking at the wiki page on [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternions]quaternions[/b], and yawyaw had two threads on it, so you need not develop anything, apparently the whole basic theory is already there.

What I do not understand in quaternion (but this should really be another thread, not this one, maybe a moderator can split it up, if thomheg agrees) is that there are three imaginary directions (i, j, k), and according to the wiki page and I also think yawyaw metioned this, there holds the following:

i² = j² = k² = -1 = ijk

I understand the first three equal signs, but I have big difficulties with the last part (I rearranged the terms for clarity). Why would ijk = -1? Ah okay, I need to read further and find that ij=k for some reason. It seems too much work using this stuff. Apparently, what is "normal multiplication" in q-space is the cross-product in normal space.

So, the theory is there, so you need not develop anything, you just need to use it.

__________________
************************************************** *************************
Optimism does not change the laws of physics. (T'Pol)
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is. (Dao De Jing 27)
************************************************** *************************
Martin ( http://www.geocities.com/DrMartinV )

Unless you are proposing some new earth-shattering theory, for which no terminology exists, you should use the conventional terminology of physics. This way people may have a better chance of working out what you are talking about. You do want us to understand, don't you?

Aurora is produced by energized particles when the magnetotail of the Earth is reconfigured, and happens without the help of an earthquake (god forbid every aurora would be related to a quake!)
St. Elmo's fire is caused by atmospheric electricity, and is not really fire, but the appearance of a luminous plasma. If I am correct, most of St. Elmo's fire happens on ships on open sea, without the presence of an earthquake, but often during a thunderstorm.
Thunderstorms, big rainfalls, can create or prevent earthquakes from happening, according to your "wissenschaft.de" links.

The Demeter mission is specially designed to find EM pheno