“The Big One”
The ground shakes. Paintings tilt. Walls crack. Rubble may fall. On Earth, we understand how and where these events happen due to the discovery of plate tectonics – the continental crust’s creation, movement, and destruction. However, when astronauts placed seismometers on the lunar surface during NASA’s Apollo mission era, those instruments recorded quakes on the Moon. In the 1970s, the Viking landers also recorded quakes on the surface of Mars. Since neither of these worlds has plate tectonic…
