That was the first one in a while that woke me up... "An earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 6.5 jolted Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan, on Sunday morning. The Meteorological Agency says the quake occurred at around 3:53 AM. The quake's focus is off Fukushima Prefecture and is 57 kilometers deep. Tremors with an intensity of 5 plus on the Japanese scale of zero to 7 hit Naraha Town and Kawauchi Village in Fukushima. There is no chance of a tsunami. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says there have been no reports of abnormalities at the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini nuclear power plants."
Hmm i second this. I can't remember what causes earthquakes... Something to do with plates... transversing waves s/p or something. o.0
NHK is saying this latest one is related to Nintendo selling hardware at a loss and hell freezing over. That has caused a shift in the tectonic plates, or something like that.
I know all of that stuff. Generally after a earthquake the process begins again and normally takes a while for another earthquake. These seem to be becoming more often in Japan.
There's usually a lot of time between MAJOR earthquakes - minor earthquakes happen regularly, and we're only paying more attention right now due to the earlier BIG quake. Lots of smaller quakes is nothing new. When I lived in California, we had one almost every month... nothing big, just enough to rattle the windows, but regular as clockwork.
Not necessarily. Look around for the Nova episode on the recent 9.0 quake. It explains a lot (with graphics -- whoo) on what happens with plate tectonics. Basically pressure builds up, and it has to be released. The downside is that when the pressure is released from one pair of plates, some (not all) is shifted to another pair... like the one closest to Tokyo.
