WORLD SHAKES

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 June 1928, Page 3

WORLD SHAKES

THREE QUAKES EVERY HOUR?

What is the matter with the earth? This old world certainly is getting very shaky. In vierv of the 30,000 earthquakes a year, people are wondering if that sort of earth-shakiness is leading up to something more serious, says the “San Francisco Chronicle.” Are there, more earthquakes to-day than there used to be? That is a question very generally being asked. A German scientist says not. He states the average for many years has been about. 30,000 —more than SO a day or more than three each hour. The world to-day only hears of more of them now. Instruments are recording them all over the world, and the newspapers are telling about them. Tn former years only the big ones were noticed beyond the locality where they occurred. There is a sort of regular path of the most frequent earthquakes. It almost rings in the Pacific Ocean. The earthquake route extends through the islands of Japan, down the eastern side of Asia and Australia, and New Zealand, and comes up from the Antarctic Ocean along the west coast of .the Americas to the northern sea. It is in this zone that the Japanese quakes, the island upheavals of the South Pacific and the frequent earlh tremors of Western South America, and North America, occur. It is explained that the cause of the disturbances is (he constant resistance to the steady and progressive cooling of the earth mass. TTiis is most active and noticeable where there are steep coasts and deep sea-bottom. It is nowhere more active than along some parts of the .Japanese coast, which experience about GOO quakes a year. In those waters have been found some of the greatest depths yet measured in the ocean. Scientists conclude ihal the earlh is, not likely to have more nor fewer (iiiakes than usual in the next, few years.