Did you feel that?
It wasn’t just folks in Western New Jersey who were texting “what was that?” messages in the mid-morning Friday. People as far away as Maryland and Upstate New York reported feeling an earthquake, according to the US Geological Survey. A former CNN editor in Vermont said glasses fell off her shelf.
How is that possible, considering it was just a mild 4.8 magnitude earthquake, not enough to cause any significant damage?
The rock formations that make up America’s East Coast are considerably older than those on the West Coast — hundreds of millions of years older, according to the USGS. That makes them much denser.
Imagine putting your left hand down on a piece of slate and knocking on it with your right hand. You’d feel that. That’s like how the East Coast is formed.
But now imagine putting your hand down on a pebble driveway and knocking — not so much. That’s the West Coast. So even though earthquakes tend to be much stronger in the western part of the country, they’re not felt nearly as far away as weaker quakes in the East.
Sumber: www.cnn.com
