Why did the 1995 Kobe, Japan earthquake occur?
I think everyone knows why the Kobe earthquake occured. It was just that one tetonic plate had been pushing against another for a long time and something had to give. And when it did the huge amount of potential energy stored in the stressed rocks was released in the form of shock waves. These shock waves eminated from far below the surface of the earth. Thats all history now. However, why did it occur on that date and at that time? Now I’m going to tell you something that has never been published. (that I know of). It occured at a spring high tide when the variation betwen high and low tide is a maximum. This is also a time when the combined pull of the Moon and Sun exert their maximum force on the rock strata and on the tetonic plates. This force is only a small portion of the force that the earth’s gravitational field exerts on the same plates. But if you consider the mass of the plates the extra force is tens of billions of newtons. It is like the last straw that broke the camel’s
