Preliminary inspection of the Arecibo Observatory didn’t reveal any damage. However, a careful inspection hasn’t yet been possible, as of the time of this writing, due to the steady stream of aftershocks. Like California, Puerto Rico is located on a plate boundary. In this case, the Caribbean plate and the North American plate come together at Puerto Rico, and this and the surrounding islands exist between the Puerto Rico Trench and Muertos trench.

These beautiful uplifts of land are plagued with Earthquakes and often experience swarms of quakes. While this doesn’t appear to be a swarm of same magnitude quakes, both foreshocks and aftershocks have still been of sufficient strength to be felt and to make repair efforts too risky to start in some places. This is one more reminder that we live on a world that is still very much geologically active, and at any moment, the surface of our world can be reshaped through tremendous releases of energy.

We are hoping that for now, the Earth will stay quiet in the places where people live, and we can focus as we did earlier this week, on the volcanoes of Venus or something else – anything else – instead. Here is to a quiet world as we go into the weekend.