A full moon may have triggered the Indian Ocean earthquake that caused the tsunami on 26 December 2004, a new study concludes.
Between October 2004 and August 2005 Robin Crockett from the University of Northampton, UK, and his colleagues monitored tremors and collected tidal data along the Java/Sumatra trench. They found that major quakes were 86 per cent more likely around new and full moons, when tides are at their greatest.
“At new and full moons the biggest mass of water is being loaded and unloaded at the plate boundary,” Crockett says. That might be the final push that initiates a quake.…
