A new physical model for earthquake time interval distribution

This paper reports a new physical model for time interval distribution of earthquakes, which was obtained by borrowing the idea from the research in the time interval distribution of sand-dust storms. Of the model, it was hypothesized that the earthquakes were induced by the magma movement inside the earth, and if the speed of magma >= threshold value U-t, the earthquakes with magnitude >= M occurred. With this model, it was obtained that for the earthquakes with magnitude >= M there existed lg N(> t) = c - dt, where N was the number of time intervals longer than t; the value d decreased with M. This result was also verified by analyzing the earthquake data from the China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC). (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.