Hi All. The things one learns when watching the idiot machine. As a rule I don’t watch TV all that much, but today I didn’t have much choice. The pain medication the doctor gave me early this morning took me off my feet. Anyway it was about the Oracle of Delphi in Greece. I thought I was going to see something about a mystic, but instead I learned of what might be the cause of “earthquake lights” as well as a precursor to large quakes.

According to legend, Plutarch, a priest at the Temple of Apollo, attributed Pythia's prophetic powers to vapors. Other accounts suggested the vapors may have come from a chasm in the ground. Plutarch, who ran the temple for many years, wrote that the gases of the oracular chamber smelled sweet, like flowers. He also studied the history of the temple and made some shrewd observations. By his time, late in the first century CE, the oracle was not considered as powerful as in old times and the gases were not often present in the chamber. He surmised that the vapors came from a source deep in the Earth that was slowly losing its potency, and he thought that the great earthquake of 373 BCE had closed off some of the passages leading up to the surface.

This traditional explanation, however, has failed to satisfy scientists. In 1927, French geologists surveyed the oracle's shrine and found no evidence of a chasm or rising gases. They dismissed the traditional explanation as a myth.

Their conclusion was aggregated by a modern misconception that vapors and gases could only be produced by volcanic activity. It is this conclusion that causes the delay in learning more about the temple and the cause of the vapors.

Greece sits at the confluence of three tectonic plates. The shifting of these plates continually stretches and uplifts the area, which is riddled with faults.

Several years ago, Greek researchers found a fault running east to west beneath the oracle's temple. Jelle De Boer, a geologist at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and his colleagues discovered a second fault, which runs north to south. "Those two faults do cross each other, and therefore interact with each other, below the site," said De Boer. About every 100 years a major earthquake rattles the faults. The faults are heated by adjacent rocks and the hydrocarbon deposits stored in them are vaporized. These gases mix with ground water and emerge around springs.

De Boer conducted an analysis of these hydrocarbon gases in spring water near the site of the Delphi temple. He found that one is ethylene, which has a sweet smell and produces a narcotic effect described as a floating or disembodied euphoria. Today’s teenagers can tell you all about this feeling you get from sniffing gasoline and other such substances.

Just before the quake in 373BCE there were reports of people hear a rushing sound like the wind and strange lights were seen in the distance. There were also reports of people smelling an odor that was somewhat like flowers. It was shortly after this strange going on that the quake struck. The same thing was seen during the 2002 Turkey quake. There were reports of fire being seen in the bottom of the sea and fishermen were hauling in dead fish and crabs. There was also a report of 3 fireballs seen rising from the sea. The culprit in all of this could be ethylene gas as it is a very flammable gas. I sure hope no one is going to go around now sniffing every crack they find in the ground. But then maybe, just maybe someone might smell the next large quake in the making.

It is indeed a strange world that we live in. Take Care…Don in creepy town

• Oracle of Delphi