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Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 55: Jan-Feb 1988 |
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The Zeitoun Luminous Phenomena
"Between April, 1968 and May, 1971, hundreds of thousands of people reported complex luminous events over a church in Cairo (Zeitoun), Egypt. Many of these events were photographed. Most of the luminous phenomena (LP) occurred during 1969 when seismic activity within the radius of less than 500 km was approximately a factor of 10 greater than for any single year before or afterwards. Whereas the distribution of epicenters around Zeitoun was randomly distributed for the years 1966 through 1968 and 1970 through 1972, there was a significant focus of their frequency during the year 1970. Most of them occurred off the coast of Gemsa, approximately 375 km to the southeast of Cairo."
Analysis of the LP and seismic records demonstrated a significant increase in the number of LP during the month of, or the month before, increases in the number of earthquakes per month. The relationship between LP and quakes was not, however, as strong as it had been for episodes of luminous phenomena in Toppenish, Washington; the Uintah Basin, Utah; Carman, Manitoba; and the New Madrid region in the central US. Still, the Zeitoun phenomena must be considered as supportive of the hypothesis that many LPs are associated with tectonic strain in the earth's crust.
(Derr, John S., and Persinger, Michael A.; "Temporal Association between the Zeitoun Luminous Phenomena and Regional Seismic Activity," The Explorer, 4:15, October 1987.)