USGS keeps track of all the earthquakes in the world (24 so far just today)

[lunatica]

Click on the MAP link and it'll show the color coded earthquakes and their intensity. Haiti's has been a 4.5 today. There was a 4.7 in Colombia and a 3.4 and 2.5 in Central California. For more see the link

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.php

[lunatica]

1. No one is interested?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. Not particularly.

There are many earthquakes every day all around the world.

Why is this any different.

[lunatica]

8. Did I say it was different?

I do think it's interesting in light of the worst earthquake I've known of in my lifetime, but certainly not different.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. If it isn't different, why would it be interesting?

Every time there's a major quake there's somebody who finds the USGS website and is shocked to discovered that there are always earthquakes in the same real world they've been living in for years but never really paid attention too.

[lunatica]

12. It must be hard to know everything about everything all the time

You have my sympathies

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

13. Not really.

Basic scientific literacy is taught at the high school level.

[lunatica]

17. So once you got out of high school you lost interest in science?

or was that non sequitur meant as some pitiful dig at me? Interest in earthquakes is equated to science literacy in high school. Yeah, right. I see the connection of why it's such an uninteresting thing. You got me.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

18. No.

If I wanted to make a dig at you I'd bring up the homeopathy in connection with the scientific literacy.

One doesn't need to know everything, as you suggested, to know the very basics of earthquakes and plate tectonics and how the work world works, just a high school education.

[MineralMan]

24. How silly. Not a day goes by that I do not check the USGS

earthquake site. I've never not been interested in earthquakes...not since I was thrown out of my bed at age 5 in 1950.

[MineralMan]

22. You must be very young. I remember the huge Chinese earthquake

in the 1970s that killed some 250 thousand people or more.

[lunatica]

27. Actually I'm so old I had a senior moment there

I do remember it now that you reminded me.

[MineralMan]

3. Sounds like an average day, then.

For those of us who follow earthquake activity, there's nothing unusual going on. Even the Haiti earthquake is part of normal global seismic activity. It's just that most earthquakes of that size don't cause the damage this one did.

[malaise]

19. And that makes it very frightening

Thanks for the thread lunatica

[MineralMan]

21. Having lived in an earthquake zone in California for most of

my life, earthquakes were just part of things. Very, very occasionally, a big one hit. My first big one was when I was five years old, and it threw me out of my bed. Since then, I've experienced several such large earthquakes.

In California, we more or less built for it. When the Northridge quake came, though, my brother's house was knocked off its foundation and had to be demolished. There it was. He built a new one.

The current earthquake frequency is normal for the planet. It's been 200 years since a large earthquake hit Port au Prince. It may be 200 years from now when it happens again. By that time, the population will have forgotten this one, I can guarantee.

[Catshrink]

4. I didn't realize there were that many in a day.

I didn't think they were that rare -- my sister in Alaska says they happen all the time. My nephew is really good at saying their Richter scale value just by how it feels.

[havocmom]

6. Here's a good graphic site to show quakes

http://www.iris.edu/seismon/
Red circles: within past 24 hours
Orange circles: within past week
Yellow circles: within past 2 weeks
magenta is withing past 5 years

hover cursor near circles and you get date & magnitude.

Handy page to see trends in plate movements at a glance. Good visual for teaching just how much shakin is goin on ;)

[lunatica]

9. Thanks!

The planet sure moves a lot. Much more than I expected.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. "There is no safety in the cosmos." Alan Watts

[XemaSab]

11. "All find safety in the tomb." WB Yeats

[MineralMan]

23. Very wise man, Yeats.

[sharesunited]

7. Lots of little ones is probably a good thing. Relieves the stress forces with the least damage.

[Generator]

14. End times

Time ending.

[ddeclue]

15. Not all that unusual.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

16. For Firefox users, there is an add-on called equake. It lists all of the current quakes

from the USGS and it appears on the bottom of Firefox. I saw a few aftershocks of the Haitian earthquake before they were reported.

[hobbit709]

20. There's 12,000 to 14,000 quakes yearly around the planet.

[flvegan]

25. I also had no idea there was that much earthquake activity.

Thanks for posting despite what others might say.

[Barack_America]

26. Looks like some of that tension was passed to Puerto Rico?

Lots of little quakes near there the past couple of days.

[Jamastiene]

28. I have a question for those who know about the science behind earthquakes.

I've read that the depth of the quake can make a real difference in how much damage and destruction quakes can cause. Common sense tells me that makes sense. Naturally, if it is closer to the surface, it is going to be more violent. Is that correct?

Also, the video floating around of the moment the 7.0 hit Haiti the other day shows wild bouncing up and down of the ground. Is that really how quakes move the ground or was that inertia causing the camera to move up and down more than the ground was really moving or what? I've never been in a quake. So, in order to understand better, I have to ask stupid questions like this. Sorry.

[Control-Z]

29. To be honest, I've never seen

footage that does a quake justice. A big quake can feel far worse than that video looks. Not that it doesn't look horrifying. But one quake can feel quite different from another, depending on the type of fault, magnitude, epicenter, depth, and whether you're inside, say on the 2nd floor of your home, or outside on the lawn. I've had the floor drop out from under me in one quake, and the house pound like it was being hammered into the ground in another. Some just shake like one would imagine. Others roll like the surface of a water bed.

[Jamastiene]

33. Thank you.

I have been trying to learn as much as I can about hurricanes and tornadoes, because we experience those a lot here. The last earthquake in my area was before my time and it was down in Charleston, SC. I was just shocked at the way that video looked like the water bed rolling look of the video I saw. I had always pictured quakes as being more of a shaking feeling.

Thank you for the information.

[Codeine]

30. Shaking can be so variable in character.

Sometimes it builds slowly to a crescendo before fading out, other times it hits like a ton of bricks and stops as suddenly. Sometimes it feels like ocean waves, sometimes a side-to-side shake, and occasionally it can even feel like all the motion is up and down like hitting bumps on a road in your car.

Sometimes you can even hear them coming a second or two in advance. That's a scary sensation of pure helplessness.

[Jamastiene]

32. Thank you.

I've always wondered if they were just like shaking or if there were variations depending on the strength of the quake.

[w8liftinglady]

31. I'm interested-In my part of Texas,earthquakes were rare until...

they began drilling for natural gas and injecting water underground to fill in the space.I wonder how many of these earthquakes are manmade..?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/12/gas-drilling-might-be-res_n_215080.html
http://www.expatica.com/nl/news/local_news/groningen-rocked-by-record-earthquake-32117.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080609093238.htm
http://pesn.com/2005/01/25/6900062_Exxon_Tripped_Indonesian_Tsunami/man-made_quakes_in_Alabama.htm
http://seriousbull.com/?p=85
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601072&sid=akyt.PqERmjw
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/06/top-5-ways-that/

[Jamastiene]

34. Thank you for the links.

I have always had a theory that oil is the Earth's "blood" and we are sucking her dry. There MUST be consequences to that. These links will be good reading. Thanks.