- An earthquake struck New Jersey on Friday, days before a total solar eclipse.
- But the two events have no correlation according to the United States Geological Survey.
- Some scientists believe there is a link between the Moon’s pull and Earth’s tremors. Here’s what they know.
An earthquake hit New Jersey on Friday, and the fact that it happened days before a total solar eclipse swept across America didn’t go unnoticed.
People have taken to X, formerly Twitter, to discuss the connection between the two events, with many joking that it’s a sign of the end times to come.
The eclipse itself is unlikely to have had any impact on the earthquake, the United States Geological Survey previously said.
“It has nothing to do with the solar eclipse. Earthquakes of this magnitude — there’s basically no correlation with celestial bodies,” USGS seismologist Paul Earle said during a press briefing Friday.
That said, previous research has linked the Moon to Earth tremors.
The moon’s effect on earthquakes was hidden
Our Moon has an undeniable impact on Earth’s tides. Its gravitational pull causes sea levels to rise and fall on our planet. But what if the Moon had a smaller and less visible impact on our planet?
A small handful of experts claim to have proof that our satellite produces forces that could trigger earthquakes.
Scientists have long wondered whether lunar tides could be linked to earthquakes. After all, our satellite is still there, moving the weight of the oceans and pulling on our planet.
An animation illustrates how the Moon’s gravity creates tides on Earth. NASA/Vi Nguyen
Surely all this pressure, even if gradual, would have a significant effect, the scientists asked.
But until recently, data sets weren’t good enough to show the connection between the Moon and earthquakes, and the pull was thought to be too weak to have a significant impact.
“For a while, this was a field where only fools worked,” Chris Scholtz, a geologist and professor emeritus of earth and environmental sciences at the Columbia Climate School, told Insider.
But with the advent of larger, more comprehensive data sets over the past 20 years, the Moon’s influence has begun to emerge from the data. And it appears that in some cases the Moon has helped trigger earthquakes around the world.
“With these huge data sets, they started to get a small but significant correlation,” Scholtz said, adding, “Now it’s credible,” he said.
The Moon also pulls on Earth’s rocks
The Moon also pulls like the Earth, scientists have discovered. Getty Images
It’s not just in the oceans that the Moon wreaks havoc. Although we don’t feel it, the moon also causes tiny but significant tides in the rocks.
Standing on Earth’s surface, it can be difficult to imagine mountains fluctuating like the ocean, but rocks bulge and crash under the pull of the moon.
“Solid earth tides are the same as tides, it’s just on solid earth. And the range of motion is very small because the earth is very rigid,” Scholtz said.
“You can measure it with a very sensitive instrument. But you can’t notice it,” he said.
These tides can warp the Earth by up to about 22 inches vertically and about 11 inches horizontally each day, Davide Zaccagnino, a doctoral student in geophysics at Sapienza University of Rome, told Insider in an email.
Digging into these data sets, a few studies have suggested a link between Earth’s tides and earthquakes.
“Although fluids can flow, rocks can change shape slightly depending on the intensity and direction of tidal disturbance, which promotes stress buildup,” Zaccagnino said.
If rocks are already under excessive stress due to the action of tectonic forces, even a slight stress due to the pull of the moon can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, creating a crack in the rock, he said.
“If the surrounding rocks are also unstable, the fracture can accelerate and involve large faults. The end result is an earthquake,” Zaccagnino said.
The moon can put the weight of the ocean on a volcano
The images show the Moon rotating around the Earth. Scientists are beginning to uncover the Moon’s small but powerful effect on Earth’s earthquakes. NASA/NOAA
Underwater earthquakes are a place where the impact of the moon is clearly visible. This makes sense, given the pull of the moon on the oceans.
A 2004 paper in the peer-reviewed journal Science, for example, found that earthquakes along underwater fault lines appeared to follow ocean tides.
Scholtz and his team set out to study how the Moon might exert its power over earthquakes at Axial Volcano, on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, off the west coast of the United States. Earthquakes here are ten times more likely to occur when the tide is out, Scholtz said.
A graph shows the number of earthquakes that occur depending on the phase of the tide. Phase 0 means the tide is falling. Scholz, CH, Tan, YJ and Albino, F. Nat Commun 10, 2526 (2019). CC PAR 4.0
Their study, published in Nature Communications in 2019, found an explanation for the link between the moon and earthquakes. This suggested they were caused by the weight of the ocean pressing down on a volcano’s magma chamber.
“What happens is the tides cause the magma chamber to inflate and deflate,” he said. “That’s what causes earthquakes.”
Then, when the tide is low, less water presses on the chamber, which then inflates. This, in turn, puts more pressure on the fault line, making it more likely to contract and create an earthquake.
This can push earthquakes to extremes
Let’s be clear: the moon is not the cause of these earthquakes. Rather, it is when the rock is on the verge of collapse that the moon’s little tug could push it past this final tipping point.
This only happens in very specific circumstances, such as when the pressure exerted by the Moon’s gravitational pull aligns perfectly with the fault line. So it’s not like we can say that every earthquake is more likely to occur when the moon is out.
“Tides can’t help us predict earthquakes. But they can help us better understand their physics, which is still largely unknown,” Zaccagnino said.
Knowing when the moon’s pull may have kicked in during an earthquake can help us, for example, understand when the crust reached a breaking point, Zaccagnino said.
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