• Question: Will the earth move and make the whole world have an earthquake

    Asked by zoe1999 to Laura, Nicola, Norman, Sandra, Thanasis on 14 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Laura Soul

      Laura Soul answered on 14 Mar 2013:

      Very unlikely, for the whole earth to move at once and have an earthquake everywhere something very big would probably have to hit it! Some things could happen that might make very big earthquakes that would cover a lot of the planet. Some people think that at yellowstone national park in America there’s loads of magma under the surface and that it might make a supervolcano. This would probably cause very big earthquakes, but they probably still wouldn’t reach over the whole planet. Plus lots of other scientists think that the supervolcano won’t happen.

      If you are asking about it happening like it does in the movie 2012, where the whole of the surface of the Earth rotates and makes earthquakes everywhere, then no this is probably not possible. Everything that we have worked out about the Earth and how it works so far suggests that there is no way that this could happen! I definitely hope that it doesn’t!

    • Photo: Nicola Wardrop

      Nicola Wardrop answered on 14 Mar 2013:

      Hmmm…I don’t think the earth will move as such. Well, it’s moving all the time…spinning around in its orbit around the sun, but this movement shouldn’t cause earthquakes. I don’t think that there will be a massive earthquake all over the world…earthquakes normally happen at fault lines, kind of where there are cracks in the earth’s crust. Gradually the crust moves, and the process of the crust rubbing togther at these cracks can cause earthquakes. The chances of it happening all over the world are slim, as lots of places don’t really get earthquakes very much at all (or ever)…probably because they don’t have any fault lines.

    • Photo: Sandra Phinbow

      Sandra Phinbow answered on 17 Mar 2013:

      The earth is always moving – have a look at the star trails piccies on my profile, you can see how we spin constantly 🙂

    • Photo: Thanasis Georgiou

      Thanasis Georgiou answered on 18 Mar 2013:

      The earth moved all the time, around the sun. It’s what makes day a night. You would be surprised to find that the earth travels very very fast! About 30km/s. Travelling at that speed it would take you about 10 seconds to you from Manchester to London.

      Earthquakes are a completely different story. They are due to some big plates(called tectonic) that are kilometres under the surface of the earth. When these move, or slide against each other, earthquakes happen!

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