Will a Planetary Alignment Cause a 9.8 Earthquake ?


Recommended Posts

Will a Planetary Alignment Cause a 9.8 Earthquake ??
 
An earth-shattering 9.8 earthquake is coming this week! At least according to your weird uncle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

LOL - I thought the Jupiter Effect was supposed to cause all of the planets to slam into one another ??  That should be good for at least a 10.0 quake

Here in North Texas we cant get better than a 4.0   :(


People are so stupid, I am sure some will panick - go to wal-mart and buy all the water or something
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Planetary alignments are nothing to worry about. The planets are very far away. The gravitational pull is not nearly enough to cause solid rock to shake. Although the Moon is much smaller, it's also much closer. It only causes tides, not earthquakes as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't want to make the calculations (too lazy :p ), so I paste this just to give us a bit of context:

 

 

Although Jupiter is very massive, it is also very far away. When at its closest distance to Earth of about 600 million kilometers, Jupiter has a gravitational pull of 0.00013 newtons on a person with a mass of 100 kg, according to Newton's law of gravity. This is roughly equivalent to the gravitational attraction of a compact car from half a meter away.

 

Saturn has less mass and it's farther away. So the gravitational pull is even lower. Which means the equivalence to the compact car example has to result in an even greater distance (and/or a lighter object to compare with).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Planetary alignments are nothing to worry about. The planets are very far away. The gravitational pull is not nearly enough to cause solid rock to shake. Although the Moon is much smaller, it's also much closer. It only causes tides, not earthquakes as well.

 

 

I didn't want to make the calculations (too lazy :p ), so I paste this just to give us a bit of context:

 

 

Saturn has less mass and it's farther away. So the gravitational pull is even lower. Which means the equivalence to the compact car example has to result in an even greater distance (and/or a lighter object to compare with).

Yes - I was in 3rd grade science as well -- but I was probably drunk - so I guess your posts did help

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Will a Planetary Alignment Cause a 9.8 Earthquake ??
 
An earth-shattering 9.8 earthquake is coming this week! At least according to your weird uncle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

All these times the world has been reported to be ending, and yet once they're shown to be wrong, we never hear from these nut jobs again

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All these times the world has been reported to be ending, and yet once they're shown to be wrong, we never hear from these nut jobs again

 

 

It gives a chance for the next row of nuts to come out with the next round of hysterical, apocalyptic, doomsday predictions. They are usually just slightly altered from the last group of hysterical, apocalyptic, doomsday predictions, but at least everyone gets a chance to rant incoherently about god, religion, ancient cultures, aliens, "energy", or some other completely un-evidenced, unscientific hooey. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.