Can one earthquake trigger another on the other side of the world?

When there are earthquakes in Japan, the water sloshes in Devil's Hole in Death Valley, California.

The Earth is more amazing than we know.

Also I'm not sure how "relative risk" translates to absolute risk. Would a place with already high risk (say one in twenty years) see the doubling of absolute risk (one in ten years) in the days following an earthquake on the other side of the globe? (I know, the answer is probably that there is disagreement over this.)

> Since the seismic waves converge at the antipode, this means that regions directly opposite a large mainshock should be on high alert for at least three days, after which the relative risk reduces.

A doubling of risk does not change the danger in ways that should let us change our behavior. If it's dangerous at 2 times the rate it's dangerous at the normal rate too. The three days to be spent on "high alert" stand against just six days on "normal alert" with the same risk of a strike.

I see flurries of earthquakes around the ring of fire specifically because it is one gigantic plate! if one side of it moves a tiny bit, the other side has been displaced a tiny bit, so anything on top of it is moving also

Edited to add: there is also the speculation that the massive volcanism of the Deccan Traps in India were triggered by the Chicxulub impact event, because they were antipodal and roughly the same time. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_Traps]

My issue with the content is that it's not clear whether the author is a scientist, nor whether all statements are based on scientific articles. It starts off sounding like popularizing established science, but then makes some claims without giving sources, even informal. For example, the graphic with the "+ pattern" says it is based on analysis, but doesn't say whose. Is it from a scientific article, some other article or the author's own speculation, any would be fine if it were explained. There is a "Methods" section at the end, but it isn't clear from that either: " The Sumatra data was limited to M5.5+ earthquakes, and was collected worldwide." There's a reason your English teacher told you not to use the passive voice!

In general I found the graphics and animations to be clear and informative, and the multi-media aspect well done. But there were some annoying distractions: first, the vertically scrolling text sometimes covered the key part of the graphic, like I scrolled past the right location without knowing where it was. There needs to be "sticky" places where the scrolling stops to present the next piece of information.

More critically, when the dots representing the CA quakes are moved from the map to the timeline, they loose their size. Since the whole point is to count significant quakes over time, this is a net loss of understanding and source of confusion. The fact that the one key 5.5 quake later has to be highlighted (and I almost missed it in the scrolling), shows how important it would be to keep the size. And here the argument is weak because the 5.5 quake was nearby and the next day, so not really different from an aftershock--it's like the change of graphic is used to hide the weakness of the argument.

The Northridge aftershocks were the worst. 3 days of on-the-edge terror.

Problem solved, you can send me the remainder of your research grants now.