BY JESS O’KEEFE
Lions’ Pride Assistant Editor

During the fall semester alone there have been four significant earthquakes, three of them occurring in the last month alone.

The first of these, is the 7.0 earthquake that shook Haiti in the beginning of January, sadly killing 200,000 people. Then Japan, on February 26th was hit with a 7.0 magnitude quake near Japan, the day after a 8.8 quake hit Chile, then to top it all off, Taiwan is hit with a quake of 6.6.

To figure out this sudden boost in earthquakes, one must understand what an earthquake is. Think back to science class in middle school, and the lesson plan on tectonic plates. Webster dictionary defines an earthquake as shaking or trembling of the earth that accompanies mountain building or other crustal movements including those caused by deposition of heavy loads of sediment on the sea bottom. The action of an earthquake itself is caused by the sudden slip on a fault, the slip then causes radiated seismic energy, magmatic activity, or other sudden stress changes in the earth.

So, what do all these earthquakes mean? And are any connected? According to USA TODAY Geophysicist Paul Caruso said “No, not that we can see, we’ve had quite a few quakes in the past two months, but not more than average.”

What has made the recent earthquakes newsworthy is that the earthquakes have hit near populated areas, says Caruso. Another 6.4 quake following the larger quakes rattled the tiny Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, but no injuries have been reported.

Caruso said the three recent Pacific quakes are all related to the so-called “ring of fire,” a seismically active region that surrounds the ocean. However, the distances between the quakes are far too great for there to be any relationship between them, with the recent earthquakes devastating Haiti, Chile, and Japan. Surprisingly, geological survey proves that several million earthquakes globally occur all the time, because their magnitudes are so small and location usually remote so they go undetected.

Although these quakes have destroyed cities and caused tremendous damage on a local level and economic issues on a global level, perhaps an interesting result from the recent activity is how they have affected the length in a day.

According to gizmodo.com NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said that days will now be shorter because the quake shifted Earth’s axis by three inches. The change—which can only be measured thanks to computer models—will result in days that are 1.26 microseconds shorter than before. That’s 0.00000126 seconds shorter.

There may have been more visible changes, like islands changing its position. One of them, Santa María, may have raised two meters after the shattering land move.

So what does the future hold? Any more quakes for planet Earth, hopefully not!