Huge increase of earhquakes with magnitude higher than 7. Prove here.

After the earthquake in Japan and the tsunami my wife started to get worried and afraid of the time to come. She told me, that in her childhood (she is born 1974), she never heard so much about earthquakes like in the recent past. Her impression was, that we are getting more and more earthquakes. I thought I prove her wrong and calm her down.

There is a "search engine" called Wolfram Alpha which is more like a knowledge base. You ask questions and get the results even visualized. So my idea was to get the earthquake of the past 30 years with a magnitude higher than 7 along a time line. That would show that we always have such earthquakes. But that was the result:



That's at least strange. But then I created the same graph starting from 1930. The result is even stranger:



So we had from 1976 to 2005 just very few strong earthquakes. Maybe we are at the beginning of a cycle, where we have to expect a lot more seismic activity. But this doesn't mean doom, 2010, Planet X, Nibiru or whatever. In my opinion its just mother earth. Maybe the tectonic plates have settled after decades and now tension has been build up and the process starts again.

Who likes to play around with Wolfram Alpha, here is the link with my query:

www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=earthquake+magnitude+%3E+7+1980+to+201 1

Btw, when you start from Magnitude 6, you will see that there are indeed earthquakes all the time and have always been.

reply to post by C64Warrior


Nice post. Thank you. S&F.

I noticed on the second map a 7+ near yellowstone. I'm glad there hasn't been any that big there in the past 30 years.

24 hour news cycle makes it seem like things are getting worse. Something happens and its in your face constantly until the next event. I'm am posting from my phone, so can you run it for an 8 magnitude? Just curious.

reply to post by C64Warrior


Yes dear friend, I have realized this, I guess the Earth is shaking off some toxins, I don't blame her, she needs to cleanse.

Thank you for the link! I always love tools that can enlighten me further

reply to post by C64Warrior


Thanks for the links and graphs. That is interesting - I wonder if there is any other explanation? Other Earthquake sites say that its just our detection mechanisms that have constantly been improving over the last century, but that graph clearly shoes a "hole" from around 1975 to 2000 during which there were very few >7 earthquakes.

Also interestingly, there were plenty of massive Earthquakes reported since 1900-1975 (more than between 75 and 2000), so that raises the question of wether this claim of reporting and detection increasing is accurate.

Was there anything happening in the world that meant earthquakes were not reported? Just seems strange that there would be a 25-year "hole", but I don't know much about the geology during that period either.

P.S. Do your original search but with Magnitude > 9. Just don't show it to your wife

reply to post by leemachino


Yes I agree. The news are picking up topics related to recent events. When there was one plane crash, for the next weeks you will have continuous reports on plane accidents or planes that almost crashed. The impression we get is, that the situation gets worse.

Here is the query from 1930 - 2011 with magnitude starting from 8:



It shows, that we are now getting stronger quakes, compared to the time before the 30 year break.

Originally posted by Cecilofs
reply to post by C64Warrior

 

Thanks for the links and graphs. That is interesting - I wonder if there is any other explanation? Other Earthquake sites say that its just our detection mechanisms that have constantly been improving over the last century, but that graph clearly shoes a "hole" from around 1975 to 2000 during which there were very few >7 earthquakes.

Also interestingly, there were plenty of massive Earthquakes reported since 1900-1975 (more than between 75 and 2000), so that raises the question of wether this claim of reporting and detection increasing is accurate.

Yes very interesting. But when the measurements improve, I would expect that we are getting more record of minor quakes. Earthquakes with a magnitude of 7 should be easy to detect. So I think when there are records of quakes ranging 6 and below, its hard to explain by technological improvements, that there are no 7 and above recorded.

Was there anything happening in the world that meant earthquakes were not reported? Just seems strange that there would be a 25-year "hole", but I don't know much about the geology during that period either.

Yes very strange. Would ne nice, when somebody with professional background knowledge would be able to shed some light on that.

P.S. Do your original search but with Magnitude > 9. Just don't show it to your wife

Hehe, yes I tried the same and didn't show her :-)

there was two 9.0 and above quakes in the early 60's (Chile in 60' & Alaska in 64' I think if memory serves) and I'm sure the 50's & 60's saw alot of seismic activity, for eg, the 1700ft tsunami in Alaska in the 50's (eek!) - Puterman would have a graph of this I assume, maybe U2U him or pop into the Quake Watch thread pinned at the top of the Fragile Earth forum and ask the guys in there

Originally posted by leemachino
I noticed on the second map a 7+ near yellowstone. I'm glad there hasn't been any that big there in the past 30 years.

That would probably be the 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake. Which was from an old fault line, IIRC. Considering how likely such quakes are over a long period of time, the fact that one hasn't caused a VEI 8 eruption for about 640,000 years is actually fairly reassuring.

reply to post by apex


Thanks for the info. I dont think Yellowstone will go in my lifetime. It is worth keeping an eye on since it would impact everyone on the globe.

Thanks Warrior, that search engine is pretty awesome. I've been looking up all kinds of things lately.

if you download eq3d from the net; look at the amount of earthquakes in the past 7 days. it will help you keep track of recent events,,,by the way only a guess, but i think at least 20 percent of quakes are not shown,why? i have no idea,,,,carpenter44

It all boils down to mankind has been on this planet a nano second of its history. Earthquakes happen sometimes in swarms other times its quiet.

Their is no need for a Planet X, comet etc to explain them. This has been going on millions of years people.