Earthquakes

[General Mung Beans]

Is the unusual number of earthquakes this year merely because now due to the major earthquakes we are listening to news we previously didn't give a d*** about or is there really an unusually large number of earthquakes?

[Twoyboy]

Is the unusual number of earthquakes this year merely because now due to the major earthquakes we are listening to news we previously didn't give a d*** about or is there really an unusually large number of earthquakes?

USGS says no: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics ... quakes.php
Apparently we're just getting better at measuring them.

More info here:http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/ ... qstats.php

But if they are increasing it's obviously because of the copious amounts of cleavage on display: http://www.blaghag.com/2010/04/and-boob ... re-in.html

[Spectre_nz]

I think its more an unusual level of interest and higher levels of reporting. Maybe with a little increasing size of the human population thrown in for good measure.

These days with twitter and sat-phones, news of earthquakes can be in the media arena in minutes. XKCD makes the amusing assertion that news of an earthquake can now out-pace the earthquake itself.

With an earthquake in the news, people unconciously take note of all the other earthquakes they'd normally ignore because they do no damage, and more get reported in an "oh hey, by the way..." fasion.

100 years ago you'd hear about an earthquake in Haiti 6 months after the fact when some whaling ship made landfall and reported that 3 months ago they sailed past Haiti and the place was a stinking mess. Now we get every twitch and tremmor in real time.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I would say perhaps the only thing that's unusual is that more quakes seem to be coincidentally occurring near populated areas. Though, this is probably because we have more people everywhere and better communication, so there's really not much of a 'wilderness' on this planet anymore.

[Surlethe]

I would say perhaps the only thing that's unusual is that more quakes seem to be coincidentally occurring near populated areas. Though, this is probably because we have more people everywhere and better communication, so there's really not much of a 'wilderness' on this planet anymore.

You would also expect that, in some years, more major quakes would occur near populated areas than others, all else equal. It's essentially a random process (to first order), so in some years all your major quakes are going to be in Antarctica or the Sahara or under the North Pole (I just made those places up), while in others you'll get all of your major quakes under New York City or Tokyo. In most, though, you'll have a spread between --- I recall, just from the last decade, the Indian Ocean tsunami, some big quakes in northern Pakiston, and some big quakes in inland China as being in relatively densely populated locations. But not every year; this year was kind of like a 100-year flood.