3. Is the Seismic Activity of the Earth Associated With the
IMF Sign Reversal?
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Figure 6
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[5] In order to estimate the degree of deformation of the
Earth's crust at the IMF polarity reversal and crossing of the
high-speed solar wind streams by the Earth and to understand whether
the Earth's seismic activity can be initiated in this case, we
plotted the distribution of the earthquakes with magnitudes
m(b) >6.3 detected over the Earth in 1970-1992 versus the interval
between the day of the earthquake and the nearest day of the IMF
polarity reversal near the Earth. The number of the earthquakes
with magnitudes
m(b) > 6.3 was 210 during this period. The
obtained distribution is shown in Figure 6. The distribution
maximum is seen to coincide with the day of the IMF polarity
reversal. The distribution includes 144 earthquakes. The total
number of the earthquakes in Figure 6 is limited because of
insufficient data on the IMF polarity reversal near the Earth (the
information was retrieved from http://www.srl.caltech.edu). The
information about the earthquakes was taken from the Global
database designed by the US Geological Survey National
Earthquake Information Center. In order to understand the nature
of the obtained distribution, we plotted another distribution versus
the interval between an arbitrarily selected day and the nearest
day of the IMF polarity reversal near the Earth. The arbitrary days
were chosen to be the first days of all the months in 1970-1992.
Of 276 days selected in such a way, only three days coincided
with the days of the earthquakes with magnitudes
m(b) > 6.3. The
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Figure 7
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obtained distribution is presented in Figure 7. The distribution
includes 209 days, for 67 days the information on the IMF
polarity was not available (the data on the IMF polarity were
taken from the source mentioned above). If the distributions given
in Figures 6 and 7 are reduced to the same statistics and statistical
errors are taken into account, the distributions turn out to be
similar to each other. This means that the seismic activity of the
Earth is in no way associated with the IMF sign reversal. The
obtained distributions simply demonstrate a randomness in the
distribution of the IMF polarity reversals near the Earth.
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