New research has indicated that mysterious flashes of electricity, known as earthquake lights (EQL), are much more likely to occur near rifts where pieces of Earth are pulling away from one another, according to a news release issued by the Seismological Society of America.

EQL can take a number of different forms, like spheres of light that appear to be floating through the air, according to the news release. Just seconds before the 2009 L'Aquila Italy earthquake hit, witnesses saw approximately 10-centimeter flames of light flicker above stone-paved Francesco Crispi Ave in a nearby town.

Back in Nov. 1988, a bright purple-pink ball of light could be seen moving through the sky close to the St. Laurence River right near Quebec, almost 11 days before a devastating earthquake.

Rift environments are supposedly a "common factor" usually associated with EQL, according to the news release.

In nearly 65 documented EQL cases, approximately 85 percent appeared "spatially" on near rifts. Almost 97 percent appeared "adjacent to subvertical faults" such as a rift, transform, or strike-slip fault, according to the news release.

"The numbers are striking and unexpected," said Robert Theriault, a geologist with the Ministere des Ressources Naturelles of Quebec, in a statement. "We don't know quite yet why more earthquake light events are related to rift environments than other types of faults, but unlike other faults that may dip at a 30-35 degree angle, such as in subduction zones, subvertical faults characterize the rift environments in these cases."

Many subduction zones are out in the deep ocean, meaning it's likely that more earthquake lights are reported close to intraplate faults, since that is closer to where people live, according to LiveScience.com.

Theriault said there may be more subvertical faults that researchers haven't discovered yet as well.

"We may not know the fault distribution beneath the ground," said Theriault. "We have some idea of surface structures, but sedimentary layers or water may obscure the underlying fault structure."

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