Disprove A Rumor

There is a rumor in America and Asia that there will be a devastating earthquake on May 5, 2000 when all planets will be aligned. In attempts to clarify the situation, let us review three large earthquakes in 1999: a 7.8 in Turkey on August 17, a 7.7 in Taiwan on September 20, and a 7.5 in Turkey on November 12. Obviously, at least two or even all of them happened not on the day when the planets were not aligned. This fact implies that earthquakes are not decided by planets alignment. To further disprove the rumor, I would like to mention the fact that there is no relationship between lunar phases and earthquakes. Earthquakes can occur during any lunar phase, whether it is during a new moon or full moon, or any time in between. When checking lunar phases with the California Historical Earthquake Database, one will find that large earthquakes diffuse almost evenly on each lunar day. It is to say that the lunar force to the Earth is much smaller than the threshold essential to trigger earthquakes, i.e. The lunar force << The threshold (1) Now, let us assume that if all masses of the planets (together 266.24x1025 kg) converged at the Mars next to the earth (about 7.86x1010 m), the combined forces of the planets to the Earth in such a hypothesis would been much stronger than those of the aligned planets because according to Newton's law, the force between any two masses is sharply decreasing with the square distance between the two masses, and in this case, the three largest planets Jupiter (1.899x1027 kg), Saturn (5.685x1026 kg) and Neptune ( 1.024x1026 kg) are much farther than the Mars to the Earth. Therefore, The aligned combined-forces << The combined-forces, converged at the Mars (2) Moreover, the combined-forces, assumed at the Mars, equals 0.063 of the lunar force (Moon mass: 1x1024 kg, the distance to the Earth: 3.82x108 m). The combined-forces, converged at the Mars = 0.063 of the lunar force (3) Connecting (2) with (3) and (1), we know that the combined forces of the aligned planets are far smaller than the threshold necessary to trigger earthquakes. Thus, the rumor is unreasonable. Finally, I would like to persuade scientists and people, working on short term earthquake prediction, to focus your attention on "Dehydration" [1], the most important phase for understanding earthquakes, and "Earthquake Database", an indispensable support. The both will help you to be successful.

Evidences and References

Zhonghao Shou Earthquake Clouds a reliable precursor. Scinece and Utopya 64, page 53~57, October 1999 (in Turkish). or the essay on November 8, 1999.

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