[Rockhounds] Volcanos, earthquakes and things

[Kitty & Bill Heacox]

I remember as a young child (more than half a century ago) asking my 
parents why it seemed that when there was an earthquake on one side 
of the world there often was another one soon after on the other side 
of the world.  My father (who was an electrical engineer at Bell 
Labs) said it was just coincidence.  My mom (who was the Franklin 
fluorescent mineral fan, but with no college education) used the 
opportunity to show me a globe and see that some of those events that 
I thought were directly opposite, were not (we often forget how truly 
large the Pacific Ocean is!).   I had actually thought maybe there 
was a kind of slosh effect from the liquid magma in the center of the 
earth.  My dad simply laughed, and my mom said it was a good idea but 
scientists hadn't talked about it.

Now, JR & Martha, here is a copy of part of an email I sent just this 
last August 16.  I sent it to a friend of ours, George Polman, a 
geologist and fluorescent mineral dealer, after he asked how we were 
doing after news of a hurricane heading for Hawaii:

<Yeah, we've had a scary several days here on the Big 
Island.  Hurricane Flossie actually petered out last night leaving 
only a lot of rain and high surf---and frayed nerves.  Then yesterday 
we had a few hours of worry about a potential tsunami caused by the 
earthquake in Peru, which also turned out not to happen.  And we've 
had three earthquakes here this week, the last was at 3 this morning 
at 4.5 intensity.  Do you have any ideas as a geologist if there is 
any connection between earthquakes around the world?  August 8: Java 
- 7.6, August 12: Spain- 5.4, August 13: Kilauea 5.4, August 15: Peru 
- 7.9, August 16: Kilauea 4.5.  I'd imagine the ones here are 
different because they are due to magma shifting.  As for other 
volcanoes:  Philippines' Bulusan July 31, Indonesia's Sulawesi August 
14, and Alaska's Cleveland in the Aleutians is beginning to act up a 
bit.  What do you think? >

His answer was that there was no evidence that he knew of to connect 
earthquakes in different locations.

Aloha, Kitty





At 03:42 PM 1/6/2008, you wrote:
>Hi:
>
>Well, Martha got a book about the 1906 SF earthquake, which is 
>loaded with geo facts.  She reads me some of the factoids that 
>strike her as interesting or surprising.
>
>One recent one was that there was a huge volcanic eruption 
>(Vesuvius  I think?) 17 days before the 'quake. Then today on one of 
>the news shows there was a mention of someone being killed in an 
>eruption.  We didn't catch where, so she said "Google it" so I did.
>
>Much to my surprise, there were a lot of new volcanic eruptions in 
>the news today!  One was in Chile, where they were rescuing 
>tourists, and one was in the Red Sea, near Yemen, where they talked 
>about how bright the glow was from the lava.  I think there were others too...
>
>Should I be strapping the bookcases to the wall?  I'm being 
>deliberately - what's the word, maybe obtuse? - here, but isn't it a 
>little odd to have several volcanoes go off at once?
>
>I'm in WV, where there are several thousand feet of stable 
>sedimentary rock between me and the real basement.
>
>I did feel an earthquake here once, 3.? on the Richter scale, while 
>I was driving on a bridge over the Kanawha River, I thought a 
>towboat had hit a bridge pier - it wasn't too long after the Silver 
>Bridge collapsed.  It would have been really scary in an underground 
>coal mine, you bet!
>
>Speaking of Richter, Martha tells me (the earthquake book says) he 
>was an avid nudist and famously sexually active - I guess that's 
>easier in California.  Is there some famous geo-gossip about him 
>beyond his work on earthquakes?
>
>JR
>
>
>---------------------------------
>Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! 
>Mobile.  Try it now.
>
>--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
>multipart/alternative
>   text/plain (text body -- kept)
>   text/html
>---
>--
>_______________________________________________
>Rockhounds at drizzle Mailing List
>Subscription Services:
>http://lists.drizzle.com/mailman/listinfo/rockhounds
>List Home Page, with a link to the List Usage Policy:
>http://www.eclecticlapidary.com/Rockhounds/index.html