As far as I know there isn’t a fault line anywhere near New Jersey, so how come there was a quake there?
In: Planetary Science
The earthquake may have originated in the Ramapo fault zone, which is in fact partially in New Jersey. Besides the major fault lines we tend to think of such as the boundaries of tectonic plates, there are lots of smaller faults around the world. There can still be earthquakes associated with these, they just tend to be smaller and less frequent.
You’re confusing “fault line” with “plate boundary”.
The San Andreas Fault in California is a plate boundary fault, where the north American plate is sliding along the Pacific plate. It’s a very active one hence the semi-regular earthquakes in SoCal.
There are other types of fault lines including intraplate faults – literally a fault line in the middle of a plate. This is where internal forces in the plate are causing a “crack” and progressive movement. Sometimes these represent old plate boundaries from previous (1 billion + years ago) phases of tectonic movement, and sometimes they are caused by stresses in the plate. These intraplate faults can slip and cause earthquakes but they are generally much less active than a boundary fault.
For example there are about 3-4 notable geological fault lines in the UK, despite us being at least a thousand miles from a plate boundary. We do get occasional small earthquakes in certain areas.
The recent New Jersey earthquake was probably caused by a slip in the Ramapo Fault which you can read about here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramapo_Fault
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