- US geoscientists consider it very likely that in 2018, or perhaps in the next few years, there will be a significant increase in the number of strong earthquakes around the world. Their prediction is based on the periodic slowdown in Earth’s speed of rotation around its axis, which minimizes daylight.
Roger Bildham of the University of Colorado and Rebecca Bennic of the University of Montana, who made a statement to the annual conference of the Geological Society of America, argue that there is a clear correlation between the speed of rotation of our planet and global earthquake activity.
“This correlation is intense and shows that there will be an increase in the number of major earthquakes next year,” said Bilham.
Researchers who have published Geophysical Research letters , according to Guardian and Science, have analyzed earthquakes above seven degrees that have occurred on earth since 1990. As they say, they found (approximately every 30 years) with a significantly higher frequency of severe earthquakes, about 25 to 30 per year, compared with about 15 earthquakes averaging over the other periods.
Seeking to find phenomena that could explain this seismic periodicity, they discovered that when earth’s rotation slows down from time to time, it just follows periods of more powerful earthquakes.
According to the two scientists, during the past one and a half centuries there have been periods of about five years each, during which the earth’s rotation was slower by a few milliseconds a day. Then, after this five-year period of earth’s slowdown, the periods of increased earthquakes followed.
“The correlation is clear. earth gives us a five-year warning for future earthquakes, “said Bilham and pointed out today that more than four years have passed since the Earth began a new cycle of slowing its rotation.
“Consequently,” Bilham said, “we will see a significant increase in the numbers of major earthquakes over time. This year we made it clean. Until now, we only had six powerful earthquakes. But from 2018 we could easily have 20 years. ”
The exact relationship between Earth rotation (a slight decrease in the duration of the day) and earthquakes worldwide is unclear. Probably, according to scientists, it has to do with slight changes in the behavior of the fluid and hot iron nucleus of our planet, which can release vast amounts of energy and have “side effects” in the upper layers, namely the mantle of the earth .
The researchers stressed that it is certainly difficult to predict where the extra earthquakes will occur. However, based on the analysis of the past, it seems a tendency to occur in tropical regions near earth’s equator, where our planet rotates at a speed of about 460 meters per second. (ontinueReading
No comments:
Post a Comment