Through decades of research, scientists have learned that large, powerful earthquakes commonly occur in groups, not in random patterns. But exactly why has so far remained a mystery. Now, new research published July 13 in Scientific Reviews, asserts the first strong — though still disputed — evidence that powerful eruptions on the sun can trigger mass earthquake events on Earth.
“Large earthquakes all around the world are not evenly distributed … there is some correlation among them,” says Giuseppe De Natale, research director at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Rome and co-author of the new study. “We have tested the hypothesis that solar activity can influence the worldwide [occurrence of earthquakes].”
To the unaided eye, the sun might seem relatively docile. But our star is constantly bombarding the solar system with vast amounts of energy and particles in the form of the solar wind. Sometimes, however, formidable ...
