The pull of the moon is so strong that it would trigger earthquakes on Earth. Scientists are still baffled by its power.

• An earthquake struck New Jersey on Friday days before a total solar eclipse.

• But there is no correlation between the two events according to the United States Geological Survey.

• Some scientists think there is a link between the pull of the moon and tremors on Earth. Here’s what they know.

An earthquake hit New Jersey on Friday, and it was not noticed that this happened just days before a total solar eclipse was to sweep across America.

People have previously taken to X, Twitter, to discuss the connection between the two events, with many joking that this is a sign of the end times to come.

The earthquake itself was unlikely to have been affected by the eclipse, the US Geological Survey previously said.

“This is not related to the solar eclipse. Earthquakes of this magnitude – there is basically no correlation with celestial bodies,” said Paul Earle, a seismologist with the USGS, in a briefing on Friday.

That said, past research has linked the moon to earthquakes on Earth.

The effect of the moon on earthquakes was hidden

Our moon has an undeniable influence on Earth’s tides. Gravitational pull causes our planet’s sea level to rise and fall. But what if the moon had less influence on our planet?

A handful of experts claim to have evidence that our satellite produces forces that can trigger earthquakes.

Scientists have long wondered whether the moon’s tides could be linked to earthquakes. After all, our satellite is always there, shifting the weight of the oceans and pulling on our planet.

Certainly, all that pressure, even if it is incremental, would make a big difference, scientists said.

But until recently, datasets weren’t good enough to show the link between the moon and earthquakes, and the pull was thought to be too weak to have any significant effect.

“For a while, it was a field where only fools worked,” Chris Scholtz, a geologist and professor emeritus of earth and environmental science at Columbia Climate School, told Insider.

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But with the advent of larger and more comprehensive data sets over the past 20 years, the influence of the moon has begun to emerge from the data. And it seems that, in some cases, the moon has helped trigger earthquakes around the world.

“With these huge datasets, they started to get a small but significant correlation,” Scholtz said, adding: “Now it’s believable,” he said.

The moon is also pulling on Earth’s rocks

It’s not just in the oceans that the moon is wreaking havoc. Although we may not feel it, the moon also creates tiny, but important, tides in rocks.

When you are standing on the surface of the Earth, it may be difficult to imagine mountains running and flowing like the ocean, but rocks and squashes flourish under the moon.

“Solid clay tides are the same as the tides, it’s just on the solid earth. And the amplitude of the movement is very small because the earth is very stiff,” said Scholtz.

“You can measure it with a very sensitive instrument. But you can’t notice it,” he said.

These tides can deform the Earth by up to about 22 inches vertically and about 11 inches horizontally each day, Davide Zaccagnino, a PhD student in Geophysics at Rome’s Sapienza University, told Insider in an email.

By digging into these data sets, several studies have suggested a link between Earth’s tides and earthquakes.

“While fluids can flow, rocks can change their shape slightly depending on the intensity and direction of the tidal disturbance, which promotes stress accumulation,” Zaccagnino said.

If rocks are already overstressed due to the action of tectonic forces, even a small amount of stress can cause the pull of the moon to break the camel’s back, creating a crack in the rock, he said.

“If surrounding rocks are also unstable, the fracture can accelerate large fault patches. The end result is an earthquake,” said Zaccagnino.

The moon can put the weight of an ocean on a volcano

One place where the influence of the moon is clearly visible is in underwater earthquakes. That makes sense, given the moon’s pull on the oceans.

A 2004 paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Science, for example, found that earthquakes along underwater fault lines appeared to follow ocean tides.

Scholtz and his team studied how the moon could exert its power on the earthquakes on the Axial Volcano on the Juan de Fuca ridge off the US west coast. Earthquakes are ten times more likely to occur here when the tide is out, Scholtz said.

His study, published in Nature Communications in 2019, found an explanation for the link between the moon and earthquakes. He suggested that they were caused by the weight of the sea pressing down on the magma chamber of the volcano.

“What is happening is that the tides are causing the magma chamber to inflate and deflate,” he said. “That’s what causes the earthquakes.”

Then when the tide is low, less water pushes down on the chamber, which then rises. This, in turn, puts more pressure on the fault line, making it more likely to jerk and cause an earthquake.

It can push earthquakes over the edge

Let’s make one thing clear: the moon is not the cause of these earthquakes. Rather, it is when the rock is about to fall that the small tug of the moon could push it past that last point.

This only happens in very specific circumstances, for example, when the pressure from the moon’s gravitational pull lines up perfectly with the fault line. So it doesn’t seem like we can say that every earthquake is more likely to happen when the moon is out.

“Tides can’t help us predict earthquakes. But they can help us better understand their physics, which is still largely unknown,” Zaccagnino said.

Knowing when the pull of the moon succeeded in triggering an earthquake can help us, for example, to understand when the crust was breaking, said Zaccagnino.

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