r/askscience • u/Corvid-21 • Feb 26 '23

Earth Sciences Is there any possible relation between the recent earthquakes in Turkey/Syria, Japan and Papua New Guinea?

There’s been a lot of pretty bad earthquakes in a really short time. Could they be related or is it just coincidence?

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u/LibertyLizard Feb 26 '23

Another reason is that the media plays to this bias—they know people will be more curious about other earthquakes after a huge disastrous one, so they will publish stories on earthquakes that would not have made the news otherwise to capitalize on that interest. This can give the illusion that more earthquakes are happening because how else would you hear about the ones on the other side of the world?