Slow Earthquakes Sometimes Come Before Big Ones. The Sun and Moon May Be Setting Them Off
The British Geological Survey says scientists have seriously contemplated the role of solar and lunar activity on earthquakes for over 100 years. But they weren’t able to find a compelling explanation for how exactly that occurred—until now. Turns out, scientists don’t need that complex of a design to see how tidal stresses—caused by the gravitational tug-of-war between the Moon and the Sun—affect Earth’s fault networks.
- ▪The British Geological Survey says scientists have seriously contemplated the role of solar and lunar activity on earthquakes for over 100 years.
- ▪But they weren’t able to find a compelling explanation for how exactly that occurred—until now.
- ▪Turns out, scientists don’t need that complex of a design to see how tidal stresses—caused by the gravitational tug-of-war between the Moon and the Sun—affect Earth’s fault networks.
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| Original publisher | Gizmodo |
| Canonical URL | https://gizmodo.com/slow-earthquakes-sometimes-come-before-big-ones-the-sun-and-moon-may-be-setting-them-off-2000819760 |
| Publication time | Wed, 30 Sep 2026 21:20:32 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-30T21:22:05.680Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-30T21:22:05.680Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
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| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | HsquRvFlMAmd · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
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| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
The British Geological Survey says scientists have seriously contemplated the role of solar and lunar activity on earthquakes for over 100 years. But they weren’t able to find a compelling explanation for how exactly that occurred—until now. Turns out, scientists don’t need that complex of a design to see how tidal stresses—caused by the gravitational tug-of-war between the Moon and the Sun—affect Earth’s fault networks. In a study recently published in JGR Solid Earth, a team of geologists primarily based in PSL University in France digitally simulated a spring-block model, in which a block is pulled by a spring. The model was simple but replicated key details.
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