Both scientists and laymen were impressed with one researcher’s extensive work. John Nelson’s map of world’s earthquakes went viral on the Internet, showing a temblor history going back to 1898.

Over the past decade, a lot of people argued the earthquakes have increased in frequency. For that reason, many are waiting for that big apocalyptic temblor. However, thanks to a map of world’s earthquakes the layman can see for himself temblors have been more numerous than imagined. In fact, as John Nelson’s impressive research shows since 1898 the Earth was shaken by over 200,000 temblors.

John Nelson is not only a man with a thing for earthquakes. He is currently employed as mapping manager for IDV Solutions and it was that kind of technology Nelson used in creating his impressive map. The result of his extensive research is an image showing earthquake locations on a world’s map that took place between 1989 and 2003. Nelson mapped only temblors over 4.0 magnitudes and on the overall during 105 years there were 203,186 earthquakes shaking the ground beneath our feet.

In an interview with OurAmazingPlanet.com, John Nelson confessed the “sheer amount of earthquakes that have been recorder” surprised him. “It’s almost like you could walk from Seattle to Wellington (New Zealand) if these things were floating in the ocean, and I wouldn’t have expected that” he said.

John Nelson’s map of world’s earthquakes shows what the planet’s rigid points. Obviously it’s a public elementary school lesson about the Ring of Fire, subduction zones and the planet’s plates overlapping one another. But the neat thing about this map is that it is showing the planet’s temblor history for one century.

“I have a general sense of where it is, and a notion of plate tectonics” said John Nelson, “but when I first pulled the data in and started painting it in geographically, it was magnificent”. The more data he put on the map the more he became “awestruck at how rigid those bands of earthquake activity really are”.

And there’s another aspect of the map of world’s earthquakes, one that might make you worry a big temblor is coming. The analyzed data shows that since the 1960s there have been more earthquakes than in the first half of the century. But then again, earthquake recording technology in the early 1900s was significantly different from that of the past 60 years.