Are any of these major earthquakes of 2010 related in any way?
Mar 11, 2010
in
Earthquake Questions
We’ve had several major earthquakes in the past two months, and now there has been another one in Turkey. People say that they are unrelated, but is there any underlying cause for so many earthquakes happening around the world so close to each other? Could anything be causing this much notable seismic activity or is it just a coincidence and getting large amounts of media coverage?
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3 comments
Mark V on March 11, 2010 at 6:31 pm
This is just a random temporal collection. Earth does this — long periods of quiet, then one big one then more quiet, then a whole bunch of big ones, whatever… all of these events are random, related only in that they all involved plate boundaries, and thus convection within the mantle. Nearly every earthquake occurs along a plate boundary, so that’s nothing surprising or interesting.
But take Haiti, Okinawa, Chile, Turkey — in total, involving eight different plates and two different types of plate boundary.
Many thousands of miles part, lots of time apart. No, the only connection is on our human minds where we make connections — but making a connection does not necessarily mean the correct conclusion.
Al on March 11, 2010 at 6:31 pm
they are unrelated. if you understand plate tectonics, you would realize there is no correlation. the media coverage is bringing the quakes to peoples attention, however, they happen all the time. check out the USGS website – they have a quake counter. everyday there are quakes all over the world. if they occur in places with low population, nobody notices, but if there is a large population in the area where it occurs, the media is all over it.
poldi on March 11, 2010 at 6:31 pm
I guess you missed hearing about all the earthquakes that happen every year.
People only hear about what is on the news, no one hears about earthquakes that aren’t news-worthy topics for the internet or YouTube, people don’t remember about last year’s earthquakes or the big ones in 2005 or 2002 or 1997 or any other year.
Yes, they are all related because they are all caused by the ongoing movement of the tectonic plates of the Earth.