Gao, whose work on measuring seismic activity has been reported here previously, has been quoted extensively in recent weeks about the increased seismic activity on planet Earth.
"[R]elative to the 20-year period from the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s, the Earth has been more active over the past 15 or so years," Gao told LiveScience. "We still do not know the reason for this yet. Could simply be the natural temporal variation of the stress field in the earth's lithosphere," which is the outer solid part of the Earth.
All of this media attention has landed Gao in the top spot of LiveScience's 13 crazy earthquake facts. But the publication includes this caveat: "Not all seismologists agree, however,"with Gao's assessment. Which leads us to wonder: Can something be a "fact" if there is not general agreement?




