I basically want to understand if earthquakes can simply happen anywhere, or if there are some conditions for earthquakes to happen in an area.
In: Planetary Science
Earthquakes can happen anywhere, but from place to place it varies hugely how frequently they happen and how powerful they tend to be. There is a condition for an earthquake to happen, there must be potential energy stored in the stresses of the crust. Where this happens by far the most frequently by many orders of magnitude is along the fault lines, because that’s where all the movement happens. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a strong earthquake in the middle of Eurasian plate for example, it just doesn’t happen very often, in more stable areas there might not be a single notable earthquake in your entire lifetime.
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