MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Furchin / Getty Images
- A 4.8 magnitude earthquake struck the East Coast today, rattling communities from Southern NJ to upstate NY.
- With just three days until the total solar eclipse, you might be wondering if these events are related.
- But there's no scientific evidence that solar eclipses cause earthquakes.
Did you feel that?
At 10:23 a.m. ET, a 4.8 magnitude earthquake rattled the East Coast, sending tremors across New Jersey, Philadelphia, New York, and Connecticut, and bringing many New York travelers to a halt.
This was a relatively small quake, and there have been no reports of injuries or infrastructure damage so far.
A quake of this size is "enough to rattle the walls, but generally not produce severe damage," said Kenneth Miller, a geologist at Rutgers University, in an e-mail statement.
USGS
This quake occurred on the Ramapo Border fault at an estimated depth of just over four miles, Miller said.
Earthquakes along this fault are not uncommon, but they're usually magnitude three or lower. Some aftershocks could be possible, but they'll be much smaller, he wrote.
Earthquakes on the East Coast are rare because this region isn't located on a tectonic plate boundary: where two different plates meet.
Last year in New York, for example, there were only four earthquakes. Whereas in California, there were over 9,000, according to World Population Review.
With only three days until the total solar eclipse on April 8, many are wondering whether the eclipse could have triggered today's quake. Here's what science says about it.
Solar eclipses do not cause earthquakes
Monday's solar eclipse doesn't significantly affect Friday's earthquake, according to the United States Geological Survey.
John Finney photography / Getty Images
Some research suggests that a new moon — which is what gives rise to a solar eclipse because the moon is positioned between the Earth and the sun — can increase the likelihood of strong earthquakes by increasing tidal stress.
But "the tidal force is a small factor affecting earthquakes," Lingsen Meng, associate professor of geophysics at UCLA, told BI.
"Usually it's insignificant, and you really need to see through a lot of data to see some light correlations, and it only happens with the moon tide because the solar tide is too weak to have any remote possibility of affecting earthquakes," he said.
Plus, today's earthquake was too small for it to have been caused by the new moon, experts say.
"This is unrelated to the solar eclipse. Earthquakes of this size there's basically no correlation with celestial bodies," said Paul Earle, director of operations at the USGS National Earthquake Information Center, during a briefing on Friday.
So while experiencing an earthquake three days before the solar eclipse is a rare and interesting phenomenon, it's also a random coincidence.