Eclipses and Earthquakes

Last weekend , there was a Ring of Fire (annular eclipse) across Western and Central Canada and the south-western United States.  I was talking to people about it on Yahoo that day when I saw the following post:

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You won't need to see the eclipse. just listen to the new [sic] for the next 48 hours.

There will be earthquakes and mega damages all around the world ... Cayce and Nostradamus have predicted this as well as the Mayans and other past civilizations [sic] for May 20-21, 2012. Prelude to the next 7 months and final Dec 21, 2012.

My reply (which had a number of people up in arms, as well as some supporters):

And just how would the next few days or months differ from the past 50 years (since those are the ones I remember)? These natural disasters go on all the time. But as soon as someone says that it was predicted, everyone starts paying attention for a change and they *think* it's true because they are actually watching the news. It's actually just a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Well, there were no earthquakes after the eclipse. There was one in Italy, but it was about 24 hours before, so I don’t think we can count it. Not only that, but it was in the interior and also in an area that rarely gets quakes.

Then I recalled hearing that eclipses can affect the tides and make them stronger, thereby triggering earthquakes. Well, never having lived near a body of water that had tides, I didn’t know very much about them ... only what I can recall from holidays to the seaside.

So, I started looking up information.

An earthquake is being predicted for Japan  this coming July. Different sites are claiming that it is being caused by a) the annular eclipse that we just had, and b) a lunar eclipse coming up on June 4^th. To me, they seem to be a trifle distant in time to be causing earthquakes.

But, hey, what do I know? So I went back to the recent tsunami disasters. (Well, recent to me.)

I started with the tsunami that hit Japan on March 11^th of last year. There was an eclipse on December 21, 2010 – over northern Canada. That’s two-and-a-half months before the tsunami hit.

Then I went back to Boxing Day, 2004, when about 350,000 people died in 14 countries around the Indian Ocean. There was an eclipse over two months before – but it crossed from Russia, across the Pacific to North America -- nowhere near the affected area.

Not convinced, I looked at the Haiti earthquake of January 12, 2010 – partly because I was personally acquainted with someone who died there. There was a partial lunar eclipse on December 31, 2009 – over northern Africa and across Asia. Am I being entirely too sceptical, thinking that it happened on the other side of the world? There was also an annular eclipse on January 15^th, 2010 – across Africa, Sri Lanka and central China.

Then I started looking up eclipses in general.

1)       There have been 26 lunar eclipses since the beginning of 2001. June 4, 2012 will be number 29. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lunar_eclipses

2)       There have also been 25 solar eclipses since the beginning of 2001. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_solar_eclipses

That makes for a total of 51 so far this century. I haven’t been able to tie most of them to earthquakes or tsunamis at all. If there was a tie-in, I would have expected 51 disasters withing a few days of an eclipse. Not that I want disasters to happen. Far from it.

A huge amount of information is out there and it would take me weeks – if not months – to sift through it all. I found a number of blogs that claim that there is a correlation between eclipses and earthquakes, but no scientific sites.

Until I find such information from a reliable source, I will continue to be a doubting Thomasina, and assume that disasters of this nature happen when and where they happen. I will continue donating to the disaster relief funds, according to my means, and stay out of the way.

Signed, A Sceptic.