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Earth Tides Trigger Earthquakes

Dirak writes "UCLA scientists confirmed that Earth tides, produced by the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun on the Earth, causing the ocean's waters to slosh, can trigger earthquakes. There are many mysteries about how earthquakes occur, but now it is clear that it takes about the force arising from changing the sea level by a couple of meters of water to noticeably affect the rate of earthquakes."

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  1. Re:This works out by CheshireCatCO · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And the net result of those photons's gravitionation affects the Earth not a measurable amount. I don't have a calculator handy, but even the sunlight streaming toward the Earth only has an equivalent mass density of 1E-22 kg/m^3 fight over the surface. You can kind of tell that this isn't important because you never hear about anyone having to account for it. For example, NASA doesn't need to take this into account when plotting spacecraft trajectories. The distance to the Moon, which varies by a few Earth radii (out of an average of 62) is going to affect things a lot more.

    Also, you're theory breaks down when you consider that the Earth gets more additional sunlight when it's closer to the Sun than it does from a full moon. Remember, the Moon is about as reflective as charcoal. Not a lot of light bounces off o it. And what is bounced off (of a smaller surface than Earth has to begin with) is sent off in a lot of directions, not just straight at the Earth.