Quake Brings New Zealand Closer to Australia

A 7.8-magnitude earthquake has brought New Zealand 11.8 inches (30 cm) closer to Australia, according to news reports.

The quake caused a small tsunami, about 7 inches (17 cm) tall.

Earthquakes are the sudden jolts that result from gradual slipping and sliding of Earth's crustal plates, which include about a dozen major plates and several minor ones all more or less floating atop a gooey mantle. So with every big quake, there is some movement of the land.

In California, for example, the San Andreas fault is the boundary of two plates that slide on opposite directions. Scientists predict Los Angeles will be a suburb of San Francisco in about 15 million years. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, two smaller faults squeeze the northern metropolitan area in on itself by nearly a quarter inch a year.