
Solar proton activity may trigger high magnitude earthquakes - joshgel
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-67860-3#Tab2
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nabla9
This is published in Scientific Reports. Not in "The Nature".

Scientific Reports is low quality online mega journal with increasingly bad
reputation. Their peer review is a joke and they publish junk science.

Here is Derek Lowe's opinion: More on Scientific Reports, And on Faked Papers
[https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/06/15/mo...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/06/15/more-
on-scientific-reports-and-on-faked-papers)

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rshnotsecure
Recently looked into state of earthquake predicting and was somewhat shocked /
horrified.

One of the best experts we had, Jim Berkland (who was highly controversial),
pioneered to this day one of the most empirically supported techniques for
predicting earthquakes...missing cat (specially cat) notices in the newspaper.
The guy only had a BA too. I was horrified when I read this, but significant
enough results were achieved and the field is just about devoid of anything
with predictive power currently sadly. Also the underling statistics were done
in the early 1980's and forms of media change, so I'm not sure if the
technique would even yield usable results today.

Other things that are interesting about earthquakes:

1\. The moon plays some role. The gravitational pull of the moon is enough to
influence the tension on the crust. Scientists have struggled to yield
anything predictive from this, but the math suggests the forces must have some
effect

2\. Plate tectonics plays less of a role than previously thought. The classic
example is China. No major plate boundaries where new crust is being formed
(like off the coast of Japan) or of volcanic hotspots (Hawaii), yet an
absolutely devastating history of earthquakes that are well recorded going
back 3,000 years or so.

3\. The influence of large weighted bodies on earthquakes. Again back to
China, where it is thought, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences has done
fascinating research, that big enough fans form pools of water that
destabilize the underlying crust.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Berkland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Berkland)

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mellosouls
Note this (larger?) study from 2013 found no correlation and is not referenced
in the article linked in the OP, which seems to cover very similar ground.

[https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/grl...](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/grl.50211)

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LargoLasskhyfv
Interesting. Made me think of the discovery that solar activty changes the
rate of radioactive decay on earth by unknown mechanism from about 10 years
ago.

edit:
[https://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/sun-082310.html](https://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/sun-082310.html)

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andrewflnr
Has anyone tried just blasting a sample of radioactive material with a
neutrino beam and seeing if its rate changes? Seems easy to check.

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CM5
The University of Auckland has developed a CubeSat specifically for measuring
ionospheric disturbances and researching whether there is any relation to
earthquake activity. They aren't looking at solar proton activity specifically
but nonetheless may find something interesting.

You can read a bit more about QuakeTEC (the team responsible) here
[https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2019/11/25/space-
cadets.h...](https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2019/11/25/space-cadets.html)

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mellosouls
Actual title:

 _On the correlation between solar activity and large earthquakes worldwide_

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jgalvez
Suspicious0bservers proven right?

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jgalvez
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTiL1q9YbrVam5nP2xzFTWQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTiL1q9YbrVam5nP2xzFTWQ)

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andrewflnr
Can someone explain why faults are preferential current channels?

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joshgel
Most interesting thing I read today.

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supernova87a
tldr: Solar wind could cause piezoelectric effects in rocks that trigger
earthquakes. But it's tenuous at best and we're kind of guessing.

