A Chinese astrophotographer attempting to capture images of star trails says his camera unexpectedly recorded a mysterious blue flash during an avalanche.
According to the photographer, Shengyu Li, he was recording stars moving above Mount Xiannairi in Sichuan on October 27th when an unexpected avalanche occurred. During the event, his camera captured the mysterious blue flash.
“It started with a blocky serac, which randomly calved from a glacier near the mountain’s peak,” explained Carson Reid, a mountaineer who analyzed Li’s movie for spaceweather.com. “The serac would have fragmented as it tumbled down and smashed into natural obstacles.”
Further analysis of the video revealed that the blue flashes seemed to be at their brightest when the falling snow experienced critical “smash points” on the way down. Li believes that the increased flashes at smash points hint that they may be caused by a friction-induced phenomenon known as a triboelectric effect.
“Our initial hypothesis is that the luminescence may result from friction-induced lighting during the fragmentation of ice,” the photographer explained.
Mysterious Blue Flash Likely an Electromagnetic Emission
Although rare, a mysterious blue flash of light caused by cracking ice is not a new phenomenon. Victor Petrenko’s 1996 scientific paper “Electromechanical Phenomena in Ice” explains that the main cause of electromagnetic emissions (EME) in ice is the “frozen-in” or “intrinsic” electrical field that is always present in both sea and freshwater ice.
“This electrical field is generated by spatial nonuniformity in the concentration of ions dissolved in the ice bulk,” Petrenko writes. “Mobile ions trapped in the ice bulk then diffuse against the gradient of their concentration, generating electrical charge transport and an intrinsic electrical field in ice.”
When the ice cracks, this field can release energy in the form of a flash of light like the one captured by Li’s camera.
“When an ice mass is split by a crack rapidly growing in the direction perpendicular to the electrical field, the field generates two surface charges of the opposite sign on the opposite surfaces of the crack,” Petrenko writes. “Such a large potential difference can easily explain why the intrinsic electrical field dominates among the causes of EME from cracks in ice.”
The effect can also be witnessed when chewing on a Lifesaver, as seen below:
Rare Occurrence Captured on Camera
In the case of the mysterious blue flash captured in China, Li says he and his fellow photographers didn’t initially notice it “with our naked eyes.” Instead, he says, it showed up later when he was reviewing his photos.
Curious if he had captured something new, Li says he reached out to some of his friends who “frequently photograph snow-capped mountains.” One friend indicated he had seen such a blue flash with his own eyes during an avalanche. However, Li says, “They didn’t capture it on camera.”
“We have not found any previously documented cases of such an event, making this discovery both thrilling and intriguing for us,” says Li.
When reaching out to other astrophotographers, Li says one of them ultimately discovered a similar phenomenon in a video taken three weeks earlier. In that case, astrophotographers recording the skies over China’s Muztagh Ata mountain (which means Iceberg Father) also captured an avalanche. When reviewing their film, they noticed the avalanche seemed to cause a blue flash of light similar to the one captured by Li.
“It also shows a blue flash during an avalanche,” Li said of the video, a portion of which can be viewed here courtesy of spaceweather.com.
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.