Earthquake Triggering Effects – September 3, 2011

Chris and Roger,

There are a number of theories that propose that shock waves etc. from powerful earthquakes (or underground nuclear tests) can affect fault zones at great distances from the original fault zone. And they cause an earthquake to occur in the distant fault zone earlier in time than it would have had the original earthquake not occurred.

Statistical analyses would need to be done to confirm or disprove those theories. Unfortunately, the original theories can be so complex that it can be difficult to even determine what needs to be tested.

My own data suggest to me that there might also be an effect that causes distant earthquakes to be triggered by forces related to the gravitational pulls of the sun and the moon. And that triggering effect makes it simply look like the distant earthquakes could be related.

Essentially, the closeness of the distant earthquakes in time is coincidental in that they are not really affecting one another. However, in a different way of looking at it they are not coincidental because they are being triggered by similar sun and moon gravity related forces.

That theory would also need to have some statistical analyses done to determine if something like that might actually be happening.

An effort is underway to get a new Web site created where those types of processes can be investigated. However, at the moment there is another earthquake related effort that has a deadline associated with it that has temporarily stopped that Web site development effort.