Comments on: What’s with all these earthquakes?

By: Can the GOV’T Control the Weather and cause other Natural Disasters? | Very Top Secret Information

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 11:12:31 +0000

[...] true how long till other countries in the world have it? Jesse says they are already working on it.There is a research project that has been going on since before I was born that can supposedly contr…talking about UFO's, Government Conspiracies and The End of the World everyone has something to say. [...]

By: HAARP The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program | Very Top Secret Information

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:58:22 +0000

[...] HAARP Home Page. HAARP has been around a long time. I never heard about it till recently. Apparently…ary bought the project and now parts of it seem to be classified. I do not know if what the conspiracy theorist say is true but a lot of them say its possible to cause earth quakes with this technology. [...]

By: Evelyn

Evelyn — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 19:45:48 +0000

Other than the magma ocean slip, great post, though!

By: Evelyn

Evelyn — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 19:44:45 +0000

I think has been said already in the comments, but there is no magma ocean on our planet today. Also, tectonic plates aren’t made up of crust. Actually, they are made up of the brittle lithosphere, which consists of both crust *and* mantle. Underneath the lithosphere is the asthenosphere, which consists of mantle which deforms in a plastic manner, much like honey or toothpaste.

In the past, there very likely was a large magma ocean on Earth (and also on the moon), but there’s nothing like that now. Today, most of our Earth is solid. The asthenosphere is a solid that can deform slowly (enabling the motion of the lithosphere above), but it’s still a solid. Only the Earth’s outer core is liquid.

Here’s a quick guide to the crust vs. lithosphere and the mantle vs. the asthenosphere which I wrote up last year: http://blogs.agu.org/georneys/2011/01/19/geology-word-of-the-week-l-is-for-lithosphere/

By: Joe Slomka

Joe Slomka — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:51:06 +0000

I actually felt the quake.
I was sitting at my Mac, on the Internet, when my chair and desk shook.
My neighbor was having some work done on her house, so I went outside to see if there was any
heavy equipment . Not only no equipment, there was no one there!
So, now I figure it was a quake. The local NPR station started a call in show, where people were
sharing their experiences.
Coincidently, that morning a small 2.2 mag quake shook the town of Altamont, a suburb of Albany, NY.
There have been aftershocks since, all in the range of second magnitude.

By: Wzrd1

Wzrd1 — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:31:55 +0000

Terry @67, not likely. Conservation of momentum prevents such a thing.
A rapid MAGNETIC reversal IS theoretically possible, but again, unlikely and it would overall be innocuous, save for the need to change maps and compasses.

I DID get a laugh at the convenience store today. The Philadelphia Daily News has the headline:

“Ackerman
Earthquake
Irene

WHAT NEXT, LOCUSTS?”

Ackerman is the outgoing school system superintendent, where millions were “anonymously” donated to pay out her contract and terminate it. Big controversy here.
Still, it gave me a good chuckle.

Now, where DID I put my kite…?

By: Terry

Terry — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 04:49:05 +0000

What about pole shift….the location of the north pole is shifting much faster than at any time in recorded history….search ‘Pole Shift’ on You Tube.

By: Teaching Science 2.0 » Statistics and Tuesday’s Earthquakes

Teaching Science 2.0 » Statistics and Tuesday’s Earthquakes — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 04:15:13 +0000

[...] Statistics and Tuesday’s Earthquakes http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/08/25/whats-with-all-these-earthquakes/ [...]

By: Naomi

Naomi — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 03:04:12 +0000

Not sure you could call the August 20 one Australian, given that no one here actually felt it (and this is the first time I’ve even READ about it). What’s wrong with saying that it was in Vanuatu?

By: Wzrd1

Wzrd1 — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 01:38:46 +0000

steve @63 Did you forget the vacuum metastability disaster?

By: Steve Morrison

Steve Morrison — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 01:14:16 +0000

Oh, crapmuffins! I HATE when the world ends and nobody bothered to tell me! That’s the 7th time this year it’s happened!

Well, in recent years we have seen Rebeccapocalypse, Snowmageddon, and the Potterdammerung. I’ve been wondering just how many ways the world will end in my lifetime…

By: Kimpatsu

Kimpatsu — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 01:12:20 +0000

It’s all Jen McCreight’s fault…

By: UserGoogol

UserGoogol — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 00:54:07 +0000

Actually, if you’re wondering which politician angered which god, here’s a fun little fact about the earthquake: The epicenter of the earthquake was located in the congressional district of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

More seriously, that table of earthquake frequency is pretty interesting since it shows that an earthquake ten times as strong as another happens about one tenth as often. That’s a nice simple relationship. Looking it up online, apparently it’s called the Gutenberg-Richter law.

By: Danilo Albergaria

Danilo Albergaria — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 00:52:30 +0000

Bravissimo, Phil.

By: Wzrd1

Wzrd1 — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 23:32:34 +0000

ophu @57, speak for yourself. I and my wife shall enjoy our own rapture tonight.
Kids are grown, out of the house and have their own houses, SECOND HONEYMOON!

By: Davec

Davec — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 22:10:40 +0000

Gives @54 a Teddy Bear.

By: ophu

ophu — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 21:17:30 +0000

Ken B said: “Αυτό είναι όλο. Σας ευχαριστώ.”

Προβλέπω ότι η Αρπαγή δεν θα συμβεί φέτος.
I make the same prediction every year and I have never been wrong. That makes my track record better than Camping’s. So listen to me.

By: Wzrd1

Wzrd1 — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 19:41:30 +0000

Elenin @53: Oh, crapmuffins! I HATE when the world ends and nobody bothered to tell me! That’s the 7th time this year it’s happened!

Now, kindly stop lying. We KNOW you’re going to spray magic blinding dust so that the Triffids will get us.

By: jcm

jcm — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 19:23:51 +0000

...or maybe something else.

By: I am Elenin

I am Elenin — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 19:23:49 +0000

I saw that of the 50 comments before mine, 2 each came in at 7:15, 7:18, 10:15, and 3 at 8:56. Over the course of six hours and 2 minutes, one “should” have come every 7 minutes, and since that did not happen and they were clustered, the world must be ending. Indeed, it must have ended just after 8:56 a.m. and I somehow missed that.

I am, btw, poor little comet Elenin, and I wish people would quit blaming me for imaginary stuff. I’m small and innocent and harmless, and it hurts my little comet feelings when you do that.

By: Wzrd1

Wzrd1 — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 19:21:23 +0000

Gotta love the HAARP crowd, who blame HAARP for earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, someone singing off key on America’s Got Talent and Cheney’s impotence or something. Then, they cite something brilliant, like the engineer who should have his sheepskin shredded for claiming HAARP is EXACTLY THE SAME as audio vibrations, apparently electromagnetism and sound are the same in his engineers notebook. Ignoring the difference, the inverse square law and all of physics.
And we shan’t even go INTO how much energy it would take to convince that much rock to vibrate in any significant amount, my flatulence would have a far greater impact!

Besides, I KNOW what caused the east coast earthquake. It was caused by a sense of humor on the part of the creator, as I had gotten up REAL late and was reading the story about the Colorado earthquake when it struck.
My proof is the proof of the creator’s sense of humor. How else can you explain the survival of the platypus, let alone it’s existence?

Come on now, nature’s had plenty of fun at our expense with the platypus. When first discovered, it was a, errrm, it’s a… Erm… It’s a bird, mammal, reptile, SOMETHING.
Ever since, the same. First, further research showed characteristics of bird, reptile and mammal.
Then, genetics, which show bird, reptile and mammalian DNA characteristics.
Just think what we’ll discover over the NEXT century?
Assuming that the Neo-Luddites don’t thoroughly destroy our education system and ban science from the land…

By: Another Eric

Another Eric — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 18:36:02 +0000

Wait, wait… No mention of 2012 being just around the corner?? I ‘m shocked, simply shocked!

By: john

john — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 18:09:53 +0000

@Tom “So then, based on this data, between 1-2 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or great , occur every second of every day, on this planet. Really?!?!”
Not quite. At 130,000 3.0-3.9 quakes per year and 525,600 minutes per 365 days, that’s an average of one such quake per 4 minutes.

By: John Paradox

John Paradox — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:52:42 +0000

38. DanVeteran Says:
August 25th, 2011 at 10:15 am

I thought it was the Haliburton Earthquake machine causing all the earthquakes…. or was that a hurricane machine. I get so confused.

Please don’t HAARP on “weather control”…..

J/P?

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:45:09 +0000

If it tickles anybody’s fancy: a friend of mine put together a mashup a couple of years ago of official LIVE earthquake data and a Google Map

http://www.oe-files.de/gmaps/eqmashup.html

More info about it here:

http://www.oe-files.de/oefiles/gmaps/eqmashups_html