British Eartquakes

[lanwanchan]

How come we get earthquakes in Britain when we arent on any tecontic plates, one happaned lastnight and frightend me it was on the richter scale at 5.7 and an epicentre at lincolnshire. There was no other major earthquake in the world so were did the shock come from and how did it happen? Its confusing!

[dundurn]

Everybody's on a tectonic plate. The entire world is constructed of them - there is no escape!

In the UK we sit on two, to my knowledge. The north of Scotland is on one and the rest of the country is on the other. We are sliding apart slowly but surely. Comrie in Perthshire (my birthplace) used to be called the Shaky Toon because of the number of earthquakes registered there and it still has an 'Earthquake House' which housed a primitive seismometer.

To compund our problems, only some earthquakes are caused by plate boundary movements. There are also lots of intra-plate movements which cause tremors. We live in a relatively quiet backwater as far as earthquakes go, thank goodness, but we're not immune.

[mibn2cweus]

Chrisemo1, who posted the previous thread prior to the earthquake, should be suspect. <"?