Earthquake Of Magnitude 4.5 Jolts Myanmar-India Border Region

An earthquake of magnitude 4.5 jolted Myanmar-India border region on Monday, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said. There were no immediate reports of damage. In a tweet, the news agency ANI said, “An earthquake of magnitude 4.5 on the Richter scale struck the Myanmar-India Border Region at 06:42 am, today (sic).”

Earthquakes are one of the major natural disasters that human beings have not been able to decode so far. There are many reasons of the cause of earthquake including tectonic movements in the Earth's crust. Well, slowing down of the Earth’s rotation can also cause the earthquakes. Shocking, isn’t it? This must not be known by many. Right? Earth’s rotation is slowing down as the Moon moves farther away from the planet and it could cause major earthquakes, reported express.co.uk.

Matthew Funke, solar system ambassador for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said that the Moon’s gravity creates a tidal bulge on the Earth. This bulge attempts to rotate at the same speed as the rest of the planet.

“As it moves ahead of the Moon, the Moon attempts to pull it back. This slows the Earth’s rotation down,” Matthew Funke noted on Q+A website Quora. He further said, “One of the rules of the Universe is that ‘angular momentum’ can’t go anywhere — even if individual pieces speed up, slow down, or change direction, the sum total of angular momentum cannot change.”

“The Earth loses angular momentum when the Moon slows it down, so the Moon has to gain it — and it does, by moving further away in its orbit. The Moon is currently receding from the Earth by about one and a half inches per year. This could lead to major earthquakes down the line,” he underlined.