© Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
A child on a collapsed building at Darbandikhan, Sulaymaniyah, Iraq on Monday after the north of the country and northern Iran were hit by a 7.3 magnitude earthquake.
A child on a collapsed building at Darbandikhan, Sulaymaniyah, Iraq on Monday after the north of the country and northern Iran were hit by a 7.3 magnitude earthquake.
Scientists have warned there could be a big increase in numbers of devastating earthquakes around the world next year. They believe variations in the speed of Earth's rotation could trigger intense seismic activity, particularly in heavily populated tropical regions.
Although such fluctuations in rotation are small - changing the length of the day by a millisecond - they could still be implicated in the release of vast amounts of underground energy, it is argued.
The link between Earth's rotation and seismic activity was highlighted last month in a paper by Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado in Boulder and Rebecca Bendick of the University of Montana in Missoula presented at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America.
Comment: This is what we've been saying for years, though in a different form: our idea was that the current slowdown in rotation is more 'unique' than a multi-decade event - more like a multi-millennium event.
See also: