La Tercera | Researchers Discover an Unknown Link Between Cosmic Radiation and Earthquakes on Earth

Academic researcher Jilberto Zamora from the UNAB Physical Sciences department discusses the unprecedented discovery he made alongside members of the international CREDO project. This opens the door to new research possibilities concerning the planet’s seismicity.

An article published in the Qué Pasa section of the La Tercera online newspaper reports on the unprecedented discovery linking the flow of cosmic rays to the planet’s seismicity. The finding was made by a group of researchers who are part of the international CREDO project, including Chilean scientist Jilberto Zamora, an academic researcher from the Department of Physical Sciences at Universidad Andrés Bello.

In the article, Professor Zamora recounts the origins of the research project, which began after the 2010 earthquake in Chile and culminated with the publication of the findings in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, with CREDO’s research physicist and coordinator Piotr Homola, as the lead author.

In simple terms, the research demonstrated a link between changes in the flow of secondary cosmic rays reaching Earth and the seismicity of our planet. This does not mean the researchers have established a cause-and-effect relationship between the two phenomena, but rather a correlation.

In general terms, they conducted an analysis in which they examined global earthquake records and compared them with data on the flow of cosmic rays. As a result, they noticed that approximately two weeks before the occurrence of an earthquake, there were significant anomalies in the pattern of cosmic ray flow. This observation indicates the existence of a correlation between the two natural phenomena.

«The problem is that it does not serve as a predictive tool because it is a global phenomenon,» he maintains, meaning that the researchers were able to establish that a couple of weeks after anomalies in the flow of secondary cosmic rays are recorded, there could be an earthquake of magnitude four or higher on the Earth’s surface, but they don’t know where.

Professor Zamora also explains that the researchers’ statistical foundation is sufficient to say this finding is a discovery. And one that opens the door to as-yet-unexplored possibilities for addressing the seismicity of our planet.