See mushrooms are not of this earth o.o

Japanese researchers are closing in on understanding why electrical storms have a positive influence on the growth of some fungi. In a series of experiments, Koichi Takaki at Iwate University and colleagues showed that artificial lightning strikes do not have to directly strike shiitake mushroom cultivation beds to promote growth. Now they are developing technology to use electric stimulation in the production of the mushrooms, which are popular in many east Asian cuisines.

Bizarre as it may seem, atmospheric electricity has long been known to boost the growth of living things, including plants, insects and rats. In 1775, the priest and physicist Giovanni Battista Beccaria of the University of Turin reported, “it appears manifest that nature makes extensive use of atmospheric electricity for promoting vegetation”.

David Graves at the University of California at Berkeley, an expert on plasmas in food and agriculture who was not involved in this mushroom study, said “Historically, most people who looked at it [atmospheric electricity] systematically found some effect, but it can sometimes be hard to reproduce, so it’s still not by any means fully accepted in the community and there’s little understanding of the mechanism.” However, at recent plasma conferences, Graves was favourably impressed by the results presented by Takaki.

👍hm, ok as I thought.

A hole in the ozone opens up every year above Antarctica — but scientists were surprised to find one on the other side of the planet.

TSUNAMI WARNING NEAR JAPAN, PLEASE TAG YOUR JAPANESE FRIEND O 👍👀

The Philippine Sea plate is bordered by the larger Pacific and Eurasia plates and the smaller Sunda plate. The Philippine Sea plate is unusual in that its borders are nearly all zones of plate convergence. The Pacific plate is subducted into the mantle, south of Japan, beneath the Izu-Bonin and Mariana island arcs, which extend more than 3,000 km along the eastern margin of the Philippine Sea plate. This subduction zone is characterized by rapid plate convergence and high-level seismicity extending to depths of over 600 km. In spite of this extensive zone of plate convergence, the plate interface has been associated with few great (M8.0) ‘megathrust’ earthquakes. This low seismic energy release is thought to result from weak coupling along the plate interface (Scholz and Campos, 1995). These convergent plate margins are also associated with unusual zones of back-arc extension (along with resulting seismic activity) that decouple the volcanic island arcs from the remainder of the Philippine Sea Plate (Karig et al., 1978; Klaus et al., 1992).

South of the Mariana arc, the Pacific plate is subducted beneath the Yap Islands along the Yap trench. The long zone of Pacific plate subduction at the eastern margin of the Philippine Sea Plate is responsible for the generation of the deep Izu-Bonin, Mariana, and Yap trenches as well as parallel chains of islands and volcanoes, typical of circum-pacific island arcs. Similarly, the northwestern margin of the Philippine Sea plate is subducting beneath the Eurasia plate along a convergent zone, extending from southern Honshu to the northeastern coast of Taiwan, manifested by the Ryukyu Islands and the Nansei-Shoto (Ryukyu) trench. The Ryukyu Subduction Zone is associated with a similar zone of back-arc extension, the Okinawa Trough. At Taiwan, the plate boundary is characterized by a zone of arc-continent collision, whereby the northern end of the Luzon island arc is colliding with the buoyant crust of the Eurasia continental margin offshore China.

Along its western margin, the Philippine Sea plate is associated with a zone of oblique convergence with the Sunda Plate. This highly active convergent plate boundary extends along both sides the Philippine Islands, from Luzon in the north to the Celebes Islands in the south. The tectonic setting of the Philippines is unusual in several respects: it is characterized by opposite-facing subduction systems on its east and west sides; the archipelago is cut by a major transform fault, the Philippine Fault; and the arc complex itself is marked by active volcanism, faulting, and high seismic activity. Subduction of the Philippine Sea Plate occurs at the eastern margin of the archipelago along the Philippine Trench and its northern extension, the East Luzon Trough. The East Luzon Trough is thought to be an unusual example of a subduction zone in the process of formation, as the Philippine Trench system gradually extends northward (Hamburger et al., 1983).

This is not normal and there is another 3000 happening right now based on lightning tracker.

More than 3,000 lightning strikes, which occurred mostly during rainstorms, were recorded in central regions of the country on August 15, according to the National Observatory of Athens.

The unusually widespread electrostatic activity was detected by the ZEUS long-range lightning detection system operated by Greece’s main meterological observatory.

Search and rescue efforts continue as sunlight shows the extensive damage left after Jonesboro, Arkansas, took a direct hit from a tornado on Saturday, causing major damage.