Busting Seven Common Earthquake Myths, Part II
Four more comforting truths about pervasive earthquake myths.
We've already busted three common earthquake myths in Part I of this article, to whit: California's going to fall into the ocean one day; there's such a thing as earthquake weather; and earthquakes can be predicted. The short answers: no, no, and no.
Here are a few more myths you may have heard, along with some truthfulness to chew on.
Myth 4: Animals can sense earthquakes coming.
This is one earthquake myth that can't be dismissed out of hand, because there's plenty of anecdotal evidence for animals acting oddly prior to earthquakes. However, there's no reliable scientific explanation for how this could happen, and actually, it sometimes doesn't. In any case, scientists rarely accept anecdotal evidence at face value, because people are more likely to ignore or forget the times when something doesn't happen, even though their beliefs say it should.
As for human sensitives, some people do claim to feel unusual sensations prior to earthquakes -- but then, they often report the same sensations right before nothing happens. We're not saying they're full of it, but, well....
Myth 5: Earthquakes cause volcanoes.
Not so; this is pure earthquake myth, though the opposite can occur. However, the forces associated with volcanic tremors are quite different from the average fault-triggered earthquake, a la San Francisco or Kobe.
Interestingly enough, by studying the pattern of earth tremors caused by the underground movement of magma, it's possible to roughly predict when and where a volcanic eruption will occur. However, at the current time the science is in its infancy, and unfortunately has no application at all to earthquake prediction.
Myth 6: Earthquakes are more likely to occur at a particularly time of the day, month, or year.
Observational data proves that this isn't the case; given the proper conditions, earthquakes can occur anytime, day or night, 24/7/365. This earthquake myth seems reasonable, since it's easy to visualize some mechanism, internal or external, that might affect Earth's inner geology. But as far as anyone can tell, it just doesn't happen.
Myth 7: What about the Moon, or planetary alignments?
Good question. We know the Moon heavily influences the daily tides, but there's no observable connection between the tides and large earthquakes. That said, there's tentative evidence that some minor aftershocks in some tectonically-active areas might be weakly correlated with the tides.
As for the other planets, no. While every object in the solar system has a gravitational effect on the Earth (as it does on them), the effect is so minuscule as to be almost unnoticeable. Look at it this way: the sun has a much larger gravitational effect on the Earth than all the planets put together, and it doesn't cause any earthquakes. In fact, it barely has an effect on the tides. So planetary influences can't cause earthquakes; that's a classic earthquake myth.
