February 14, 2012 - Global Earthquakes by East and West Longitude: The picture changes considerably when considering how many global earthquakes occurred, in terms of North and South Latitude (above or below the Earth’s Equator – posted two days ago) versus East and West Longitude.
West longitude is defined as that desistance from Greenwich, England (close to London) 12,500 miles west; while east longitude is 12,500 miles east of GMT (Greenwich Mean Time – UTC or Zulu Time). This point (12,500 miles east or west of GMT) is roughly a vertical line extending down from the North Pole, through far eastern Russia, the middle of the Pacific Ocean, east of New Zealand and to the South Pole.
The reason east longitude has so many more earthquakes is it includes the very earthquake prone areas along the Western Pacific Ocean, including Japan, Russia, the Philippines, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Samoa, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Guam, New Caledonia and the Sandwich Islands. West includes North and South America and parts of the United Kingdom and vicinity.
The entire earth is marked off in longitude lines (vertical lines on a map – stretching from pole to pole) in 30 longitude degree chunks. Each slice is called a Standard Meridian and constitutes the 24 time zones, although their may be one-half hour variations, e.g., Indonesia and Australia. Of all the countries in the world, I find it interesting that Saudi Arabia sets their watches to midnight at sunset each day! Therefore, if a Saudi says they had dinner at 3:00AM, it’s really 9:00PM; assuming the Sun went down at 6:00PM. (Credits: Data – USGS 1973 to 2012, Graphic – W. G. Foster)
The Master of Disaster
It’s not just the Saudi’s who set their watches to midnight at sunset each day. It’s also the Jews. All the middle eastern countries are related in some way or another. The Saudi’s actually got it from the Jews, although they would never admit to it. That way of keeping time is mentioned all through out the Bible. Not only do they count time starting at sunset each day, but they also count their months in increments of 30 (lunar) days.
Thank you for your graph above. It is very informative.