When you buy through tie on our site , we may earn an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it works .
1.Earth has been more seismologically activein the past 15 years or so , aver Stephen S. Gao , a geophysicist at Missouri University of Science & Technology . Not all seismologist consort , however .
2 . San Francisco is moving toward Los Angelesat the pace of about 2 inches per year — the same pace as the growth of your fingernail — as the two side of the San Andreas fault err past one another . The cities will satisfy in several million years . However , this N - Confederate States movement also means that despite fears , California wo n’t fall into the ocean .
Ground view of collapsed building and burned area at Beach and Divisadero Streets in the Marina District of San Francisco after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
3.March is not seism calendar month , despite what some people believe . True , on March 28 , 1964 , Prince William Sound , Alaska , experienced a 9.2 order of magnitude event — one of the biggest ever . It killed 125 people and have $ 311 million in property damages . And on March 9 , 1957 , the Andreanof Islands , Alaska , felt a 9.1 temblor . But the next three biggest U.S. earthquakes occurred in February , November , and December . The devastating majorearthquake in Chileof 2010 struck on Feb. 27 . And the huge9.3 temblorthat spawned the desolate Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 occurred on Dec. 26 .
4.There are about 500,000 earthquakes a yeararound the public , as find by sensitive instruments . About 100,000 of those can be felt up , and 100 or so do damage each year . Each class the southerly California area alone experiences about 10,000 seism , most of them not feel by people .
5 . The Lord’s Day and lunar month cause tremors . It ’s long been known that they create tide in the planet ’s crust , very minor interpretation of ocean tides . Now researchers say the tower of the sun and synodic month on the San Andreas Fault stimulates tremor deep underground .
6.A metropolis in Chile move 10 feetin the massive 8.8 order of magnitude temblor Feb. 27 , 2010 . The rip in Earth ’s crust lurch the metropolis of Concepción that much to the west . The quake is also thought to have alter the satellite ’s rotation slightly andshortened Earth ’s sidereal day .
7 . There ’s no such thing as " seism conditions . “Statistically , there is an equal distribution of quake in cold weather , hot weather , showery conditions , and so on , according to the U.S. Geological Survey . Scientists say there is no physical direction that conditions could affect the forces several air mile beneath the Earth’s surface of the worldly concern where quakes originate . The changes in barometric pressure in the atmosphere are very small compared to the force out in the crust , and the upshot of the barometric pressure does not make beneath the territory .
8 . Earth ’s bulge was trimmeda fiddling by the 2004 Indonesian earthquake , the 9.0 + quake that generated the deadly tsunami on Dec. 26 that year . Earth ’s midsection bulges in relation to the measure from rod - to - pole , and the catastrophic res publica deracination caused a small simplification in the bulge , making the major planet more round .
9.The Pacific Ring of Fireis the most geologically active neighborhood of Earth . It circles the Pacific Ocean , stir the coasts North and South America , Japan , Chinaand Russia . It ’s where the legal age of Earth ’s major quakes occur as major plate boundaries collide .
10 . Oil extraction can do minor earthquakes . These are not the quakes you take about . Rather , because oil broadly speaking is found in flabby and squishy sediment , when oil is removed other John Rock moves in to sate the vacancy , creating " mini - seismic events " that are not noticeable to humans .
11 . The bombastic earthquake ever recordedwas a order of magnitude 9.5 in Chile on May 22 , 1960 .
12.Quakes on one side of Earthcan shake the other side . seismologist studying the massive2004 earthquakethat triggered killer tsunamis throughout the Indian Ocean found that the quake had step down at least a portion of California ’s famed San Andreas Fault . The Chilean temblor of 1960 excite the intact Earth for many days , a phenomenon call vibration that was measured by seismic stations around the major planet .
13.The deadliest seism everstruck January 23 , 1556 in Shansi , China . Some 830,000 are estimate to have go .
