Multiple earthquakes were felt worldwide in the days leading up to Nov. 14, 2016. Chile, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, New Zealand, and the Philippines all experienced earthquakes leading up to the night of the “supermoon.”
In order of severity, New Zealand had three earthquakes, with the largest at 7.5 on the Richter scale. The Philippines had a 6.3, Argentina had a 5.9, Chile experienced a 5.7, and the Dominican Republic, being the luckiest, reported only a 4.8 magnitude earthquake. Of the total 7 earthquakes, not including aftershocks, there were two reported casualties. All of the quakes happened on usual fault lines, but the question still remains as to what caused so many in such a short period of time.
There is much speculation, with some saying simple coincidence, but many point to the supermoon occurring on Nov. 14. The supermoon is an astronomical occurrence that happen quite often, with every 14th full moon coinciding with the moon’s perigee, or its shortest distance to Earth in its elliptical orbit (though variations do occur).
Even though supermoons are a fairly common occurrence, the one that happened this past week was a special one. The eccentricity of the moons orbit is generally about .055 (for reference, the eccentricity of a circle is 0) but thanks to other large celestial bodies, such as the Sun and Jupiter, the moon’s ellipse can vary from .026 to .077. To explain, the more eccentric the ellipse, the closer the moon can get to Earth, and on Nov. 14, the Moon was at its closest to Earth since 1948.
Since the Moon’s gravity has very noticeable effects on Earth’s surface (the most obvious being tides), the nearness of Earth’s moon may cause some worry to anyone who thinks long enough about its implications. Astronomers have yet to determine any correlation between supermoons and any drastic seismic events, though the week leading up to the supermoon did see quite a few earthquakes.
The leading theory is that the Moon’s proximity to Earth on this certain occasion set off a whole slew of earthquakes that were on the verge of happening anyway, all needing one final incident to force the action. In layman’s terms, the super-moon was simply the straw that broke the camels back, and luckily, too. Each of the earthquakes that did occur, if they had not, had the potential to build additional pressure until the event that set each off would release a much larger earthquake, most likely ending in more casualties.
The next supermoon of this magnitude will not occur until the 2030s, with the largest supermoon in human memory to occur during the 2050s – both likely within the lifetime of the average college student.
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