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posted by CoolHand on Wednesday December 27 2017, @04:58PM   Printer-friendly
from the shake-rattle-and-roll dept.

https://nypost.com/2017/11/21/earths-slowing-rotation-could-cause-huge-earthquakes-in-2018/

High-budget Hollywood disaster flicks love to make up weird natural phenomena to vaguely explain why a bunch of crazy catastrophes are about to threaten the very existence of mankind, but they're almost always complete bunk. Now, a new study featuring actual science suggests that 2018 could see a spike in huge earthquakes around the globe and it's thanks to the Earth's rotation slowing down.

The research, which was presented in a paper by scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Montana at Missoula, focuses on historic earthquake trends and seems to draw a pretty strong link between periods of slower Earth rotation and rashes of major quakes.

It sure sounds like a sci-fi plot point, but the science is based purely in reality. The study's authors plotted earthquake activity going back over 100 years and thanks to the wealth of data available they were able to determine that the temporary slowing of Earth's rotation seems to be linked to the most devastating and frequent earthquake outbreaks.


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 28 2017, @12:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 28 2017, @12:34PM (#615072)

    Thermal expansion of the oceans is a factor.

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