Howard County IN- They felt the earth move under their feet in Indiana, Ohio and Illinois on Thursday, as a 3.8 magnitude earthquake caused lamps to shake, pictures to fall and shivers to slide down the spines of midwesterners who wondered what was happening. “My house was rattling!  I was scared!” said Stephanie Summers, who lives in Indianapolis.  ”My son Matt came downstairs this morning and said his bed had been shaking.  We thought he was imagining things until we heard about the earthquake,”  said Mark Jeter, who lives with his family in suburban Chicago.

The quake, which caused no major damage, was registered just north of Indianapolis, in the town of Kokomo, Indiana.   It’s the third time a quake has been felt in the area over the last couple of years.  Despite that, scientists said, there’s no reason to think anything has drastically changed in the earth’s core, there’s no added reason to worry.

And it’s no surprise that a midwestern quake was able to shake, rattle and roll its way through three states. “A magnitude 4 earthquake, that wouldn’t have much impact on the west coast, would be felt for a hundred miles on the eastern half of the United States because the rocks under the ground are very old.  They transmit the earth’s seismic energy very well,” said geophysicist Paul Caruso, of the U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Information Center.

“There are a lot of small quakes all over the world that people don’t feel.  There are about a million quakes on the earth every year but we can only detect about half of them, either because they’re small or because they’re in remote areas where there is no seismic instruments,” Caruso added.

One element that is a cause for concern; a major fault line in the middle of the country called the New Madrid fault.  Its center base is around New Madrid, Missouri, hence the fault’s name.  Physicists have been saying for decades that “someday” there could be a major earthquake stemming from that fault line.  It’s happened before.  Twice.  In 1911 and 1912 there were quakes registering about a 7.5-8.0 magnitude, according to Caruso, which were “So strong they caused church bells to ring in Boston!”   Nowadays there are much bigger populations and many more tall buildings along the fault line, which includes the cities of St Louis and Memphis.  Experts say they are watching the New Madrid very closely.

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