RF-Seismograph: White Island Eruption causes worldwide Radio Blackout

Maybe there is VLF activity before eruptions and maybe it just randomly shows up.

 

In what manner was the ionosphere blacked out by the earthquake?

Shortwave blackouts (sudden ionospheric disturbances) are caused by lot's of x-rays released by the sun in a solar flare. It takes approximately 8 minutes to arrive at earth.

Also a few days later if released by the solar flare energetic protons cause high latitude signal black outs (polar cap absorption) and electrons stoke up the visible aurora and low latitude ring current.

 

I would suggest you read the research on their website for the RF Seismograph. They explain it quite well. What you describe is how the sun blacks out shortwave. There are other mechanisms, evidently.

 

I've perused their web page many times. There are no forces or mechanisms in our planet that can cause a radio blackout of RF signals in the ionosphere.

This idea gets dug back up every few months here on QRZ. Claims are made that have no basis in scientific fact. At best it's pseudoscience.

 

I'm not up on the theory here.... but I can think of at least one possible mechanism off hand: piezo-electric generation. Maybe the changes in pressure on the quartz sand grains generates a piezo-electric effect, similar to the way a piece of quartz acts if you tap it with a hammer in a dark room. IF that occurs, and it's strong enough, I could see it having an effect.

I'm not saying that it could cause a black-out, but I could see it causing a disturbance.

 

What exactly is....or how do you define a radio blackout? Is the lack of skip, bounce, mean a blackout?

Or does it mean the atmosphere and space......does not propagate waves? And it's real quiet? i.e.....something in air or space that absorbs EM.

Or does it mean that by some mechanism, many more natural emitters are active and the noise is too great.......and the blackout is caused by too much emission.

All of these would have different dynamics.

 

Ugh, more fake news on QRZ. There was no "worldwide radio blackout". How does QRZ allow this stuff to be posted as "news"?

 

There are archives of ionograms for ionospheric MF-HF sounders around the world which can be utilized to correlate the time/date and characteristics of a "radio blackout".
So, there doesn't need to be any guessing.
https://lgdc.uml.edu/common/DIDBFastStationList

 

Their premise and methods are voodoo science. We have gone over this repeatedly with this ham. Real scientists have looked for an association and found none. Paper citations have been provided.

There was no blackout in this case or any of the others he has claimed. Proof: Has QRZed or any ham board or DX boards been flooded with reports of dead air for hours??? No.

 

This is poor science. Not necessarily wrong, but repeatedly fails to present proper evidence. Correlation is not necessarily evidence of causation.

How many other things happened in that period? I crossed the road. A plane exceeded the sound barrier. A rocket took off. There is no evidence of any effort to discount other causes, if indeed there was anything 'caused'.

 

I'm absolutely not in a position to argue the science. Nor, and I can't stress this enough, do I want to. So... I'm out.

 

Actually, I did experience a radio blackout during that time. I hope I didn't somehow cause the eruption when I turned my radio off.

 

You'd better lawyer up.