It does if you think about it.
When an eclipse happens, even and annular eclipse, the Sun and Moon are inline with Earth so that gravitational pulls and stresses are additive. Pulling and tugging at the faults, not just the New Madrid Fault, but ALL of them all over the Earth.
It’s been over 200 years since the last ‘Big One’ on the New Madrid Fault and it’s associated smaller faults. Entire cities and towns have been created all over the midwest. Farms and highways have cleared billions of tons of trees and hills. The weight distribution has changed drastically since the early 1800’s.
Even the San Andreas could give way.....................
I just looked at some website after thinking that the gravitational forces from the moon and sun lined up would be minimal. For a 180 pound person you will be 1.6 ounces lighter - so minimal.
HOWEVER- that article also stated that the effect on the earth itself is a 40 mm (1.5 inches) change in the crust of the earth causing a small bulge (spread out over 1000 kilometers). I don’t know if that is enough to cause earthquakes, but it is more of an effect than I thought it would be.
Spread the ground apart a bit, more water can go through the materials and into fault zones, etc... Maybe. Although I think a similar thing would happen every time we have a new moon.
But yes, the New Madrid Fault will cause another major EQ some day and cause HUGE amounts of death and destruction. I’m in the Seattle area, so we have our own concerns.
I was talking about The statement in the headline.
Two Eclipses Formed a Giant “X” Over the New Madrid Fault Zone.Only one eclipse happens at a time, so how could two make an "X"? No sense at all... And anyone making a claim like that is using mental gymnastics leading to self delusion.
You can dust this off at the end of the year and we’ll see.