I had a really interesting conversation during the weekend about magma, the moon and the earth's crust.

Today has been a mad morning of sifting through the internet as the RSS feeds roll in about 7.7 mag earthquake in Indonesia that generated a 3 metre tsunami as reported by Australia's Nine News website < http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8112691+ > (copy and paste people).

It seems at this stage that this is the only easily accessible article about a tsunami from this large earthquake, most other media sites are reporting no tsunami or damage in general.
However the link above tells a very different story, apparently from direct reports from an Australian surfing party whose boat was smashed into another, which then exploded and subsequently sunk by the wave. They all ended up in the water, swept 200 metres in shore avoiding trees as they went. Scary.

Update 27.10.10: Todays news feeds state that yes there has been a 3 metre tsunami with 120+ confirmed deaths and still 500+ missing from a very remote but popular international surfing destination. Then the very next article I stumbled across is all about a large volcano in Java (also Indonesia) and the raising of the warning level.

Mount Merapi has seen increased volcanic activity over the past week and officials have raised the alert level for the 2968-metre-high mountain to the most urgent level, said government volcanologist Surono.

What is going on with all of this. Seems like there has been a huge amount a large earthquakes, tsunamis and volcano's going nuts this past couple of years, or is it rather just a better ability to share news and information?

Whatever the case, I have been paying attention to global natural disasters for the past decade, and looking at the stats a very alarming graph is emerging.

The conversation I had was random, and very intriguing. The concept was that as the core of the earth heat's up (as apparently it is at the moment due to a very slight increase in the speed of rotation of the planet) the magma becomes slightly thinner and more fluid. The moon then has a greater influence, much like the one that it has one the tides.
When the moon is close, the magma is pulled to and from like a tide, and the faultlines and volcano's are placed under greater stress as these are points of weakness on the crust.

MMmmmmm. Something to think about.