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Asked by meg123 to Amy, Karen, Sarah, Vijay, Will on 19 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by niamhcarr.
Question: What causes an earthquake?
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Sarah Martin answered on 19 Jun 2012:
Hi meg,
The layers below the Earth’s crust are not solid, so big pieces of crust, called plates, move around on the viscous molten rock below, very slowly. But the plates do jar and strain against each other, and when the strain gets too much, the two plates will suddenly jump and slip past each other, and the vibrations that causes are felt as as an earthquake!
Here’s a website with all the earthquakes on Earth in the last week!http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/
🙂 Sarah
Comments
meg123 commented on :
How come we dont get them in the uk?
Sarah commented on :
We do! Around the Lake District in particular, and along the west coast. But there are no geological plate joins in the UK, so the earthquakes are very small and just from little tension cracks in the Earth’s crust at great depth.
Here’s a map of the recent ones!
http://www.earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/