The April 1, 2026, M 7.4 earthquake west-northwest of Kota Ternate, Indonesia, occurred at a depth of ~35 km on or near the interface between the subducted Halmahera slab and the overlying Sunda plate, in the complex plate boundary region of eastern Indonesia, about 300 km to the west of the major plate boundary between the Sunda and Pacific plates. Faulting mechanism solutions for the event indicate that it activated a reverse faulting structure, with a moderate dip towards either the northwest or the southeast, in line with the general trend of earthquakes in the region. Though the earthquake occurred near the boundary between the Halmahera slab and the Sunda plate, this earthquake is not a traditional plate interface event such as those experienced in other subduction zones, since the Halmahera slab is completely subducted and has no surface expression. Slip on a fault aligned with either nodal plane is thus consistent with the tectonic setting of this event.
Tectonics in eastern Indonesia are extremely complex and are dominated by the mostly convergent interactions of the Pacific, Australia, Philippine Sea, and Sunda plates, with some authors labeling the most proximate edge of the Pacific plate here as a separate tectonic block called the Caroline plate. The edges of the Sunda and Australia plates are also often subdivided into smaller tectonic blocks, including the Molucca Sea and Birds Head microplates immediately to the south and east of the April 2026 earthquake, respectively. In this context, the April 2026 event most closely aligns with the boundary between the broader Sunda plate and the Birds Head microplate. At depth beneath this earthquake and the Molucca Sea in general, the inverted-U-shaped Halmahera plate, which has no surface expression, also plays a role in regional tectonics. At the location of the April 1st earthquake, the Sunda and Philippine Sea plates are converging in an east-west direction at a rate of approximately 100 mm/yr.
While commonly plotted as points on maps, earthquakes of this size are more appropriately described as slip over a larger fault area. Reverse faulting events of the size of the April 1, 2026, earthquake are typically about 70 km by 35 km in size (length x width).
This area of the Molucca Sea frequently hosts moderate to large earthquakes; in the past 50 years, nine other M 7+ earthquakes have occurred within 250 km of the April 1, 2026, earthquake. This includes a M 7.5 event in January 2007 located only 13 km SW of this event. Despite the large number of events in the region, few have been damaging because of their oceanic setting, though the 2007 event previously mentioned did result in 3 shaking related fatalities and minor damage on the nearby island of Sulawesi.
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James Cotman reports on a recent surge in seismic activity, highlighted by a massive earthquake in Indonesia (initially reported as 7.8, later downgraded to 7.4) and a 6.0 quake in Peru. He attributes these events to planetary alignments and the moon's position relative to Earth, claiming these celestial configurations cause geomagnetic disturbances that trigger large quakes and volcanic instability.
James Cotman, World News Report Today.
Ladies and gentlemen, we've had several more large earthquakes,
just as I thought we might, and did call out over the last two days
as the moon has gotten directly behind Earth,
and we have a lot of planetary bodies on the opposite side of the sun.
Watch my earthquake forecast from two days ago.
You'll see over the last two days,
I called out exactly what was going to happen.
So what do we have here?
We have a huge swarm of large quakes.
The biggest came in at a 7.8,
been downgraded as a 7.4 here.
This is in Indonesia, 35 kilometers,
a very volcanic area on a plate tectonic boundary.
I will show you the swarm as we continue.
We actually have an aftershock that's a 6.0,
and all the way across the Pacific Ocean in Peru,
we have another 6.0 right there
in the Peruvian-Chilean wedge here with all the volcanoes.
Now, this is a mess here.
If you zoom in, the USGS only shows, wow,
only shows quakes that are 4.0s or higher that aren't in the US.
there's been 30 quakes 30 quakes minus two
if you will right there and the largest of course
is a 7.4 then we had a 6.2 as well this is huge
and you know you would think uh well we're not
right on a plate tectonic boundary we'll see how close we
are to volcanoes in just one moment
All right, over to volcanoesandearthquakes.com.
We have that 7-4 and that, I guess, 6-2, is it?
We'll zoom in and find out.
But what I wanted to show
y'all here is the active volcanoes that are just under this.
That means we have magma moving around.
And we have a total of 1, 2, 3, 4,
5 active volcanoes and one awakening right here.
for the 7-4, and let's see if we can
grab that 6-2, and the 6-2 right here.
Remember, we have a 6-0 across the Pacific.
This is huge right here.
Now, this did not occur on one of the islands, but it was heavily felt,
because this was a very large, very large quake,
and we have so many active volcanoes in the area.
well we'll see if anyone was hurt in the morning
all right over to volcano discovery.com a major
magnitude 7.4 earthquake and that's good just have
occurred i want everyone to know that this came in
as a 7.8 as you can see here one
of the largest quakes ever top 10 top 20 ever recorded in the
world in the world this was a very large quake especially
with a 6.2 aftershock are you kidding
me this released so many atomic bombs worth
of energy we're going to check it out right now but
this this was something special this was directly on a plate boundary
and we have active volcanoes
and all these islands are volcanic islands
and all these islands to the left as well
so this is the danger zone all right earthquake
details here we have 118.7 atomic bombs worth
energy released with this bad boy can you even
imagine main source usgs 58 reports felt and
that's a lot considering
this was not on an island 189 seismic stations felt this one
downgraded from a 7.8 to a 7.4 we're going
to take a look at all the recording agencies and
see what they came in at but i'm guessing this quake
was much larger than the usgs wants you to
know remember i'm going to show you all
the planetary lineup that i called watch my video
from two nights ago uh two days ago and i tell
y'all the next two days we're going to see an
uptick because the moon is going
to be directly behind earth for the sun uh and then all the
opposing planets they don't necessarily have to be all
in a row if there's so many opposing planets
on the opposite side of the sun that causes that
geomagnetic disturbance here is the USGS downgrade
on their shake map to a 7.4 from a 7.8 you can see
the reports coming in from the peninsulas of
all these islands here
and from the north here uh i'm guessing somewhere in between the two
we're going to look at different reporting agencies
to determine recently this has been a
very active area as you can tell by all
the large quakes here this is just one of the quakes we've
seen spawn from this exact area all right
this was a big bad boy starting out with the USGS 7.4
at 35 kilometers of depth Raspberry Shake
a 7.1 Germany at 7.4 34 kilometers of depth
pretty much lines up with USGS we've got Indonesia coming in at 7.2
and almost twice
of depth, a 61 kilometer situation,
157 aftershocks, 157 aftershocks,
this is crazy, they've got
the French coming in at 7.0 plus 1.2,
probably the largest quake they've ever reported, the
Incorporated Research Institute for Seismology at 7.4,
35 kilometers, Australia coming in
7,444 kilometers.
The Europeans, a 7,426 kilometers.
The Philippines, a 7,476 kilometers.
We have the Italians coming in at 7,353 kilometers.
The Norwegian government came in on this one,
which has never happened before.
And they gave it a 7,435 kilometers of depth.
over 157 aftershocks to date it's always about
planetary lineups always this is a geomagnetic
or magnetic universe and what we had
was the moon go directly behind earth and then we have all
these planetary bodies on the other side they don't have
to be directly lined up we just have
mass on the other side of the sun there and i told
y'all yesterday and the day before we had
quakes to expect quakes for at least two more days right go watch
my videos what happened
all these bodies over here create well they create a mass
and we have the moon directly behind earth
It could even be worse if the moon was in front of Earth.
And we've had a 7-4, a 6-2, 7-8, I guess, and a 6-0,
all within just a few hours of each other.
We did call it.
And there you have it, folks, that 7-4, a 6-2 aftershock.
Laughable, right?
Both at 35 kilometers of depth.
Hey, this is serious business.
over in indonesia uh let's keep an eye on this area
this is really really becoming a problem
and these are going to spread to the west coast
of the united states very very soon sooner rather
than later i don't see anything too far out
of the ordinary in the U.S. right now I'd call it out
that's the new majority these are all fracking
there's some stuff up up near uh well the Cascades
this is uh right there on top
of volcanoes nothing we haven't seen before so this is the
story of the day
the 7462 aftershock 157 aftershocks
118.7 atomic bombs worth of energy
released just from the 7874 alone that's the 74
plus we had a 6-2 aftershock wow that's all i can
say god bless y'all be careful out there it's getting dangerous
and y'all gonna see all this
move up into the Mediterranean I'll promise you
that as the good book says remember this 7478
came in as a 9 on the DYFI and 8 on the JEP
and it was probably larger than what we're seeing here
that said always remember thumbs up please give us a thumbs up
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