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This picture encapsulates the beauty of a geologic fault -- it's like someone took it from a textbook and slammed it into real life.
Scientists have managed to see the unseen.
It might be a good thing... but we're not sure yet.
A magnitude 6.9 earthquake off the coast of Northern California struck Sunday night, on the 9th of March. It was the largest on the West Coast since the 7.2 Baja California quake in 2010 and it was followed by a series of at least 13 aftershocks, the largest of which had magnitude of 4.6, according […]
A laudable, ambitious initiative is nearing fruition: the US$90-million Transportable Array, a moveable grid of seismometers that blankets America. Since 2004, the set of 400 seismometers, loaded on trucks, have gradually marched, from the Pacific coast across the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains and is finally reaching the eastern coastline. Whenever they arrive at […]
A magnitude 8.3 earthquake that struck deep beneath the Sea of Okhotsk on May 24, 2013 still poses a lot of questions to geophysicists. At a depth of about 609 kilometers (378 miles), the kind of rupture which generates an earthquake of this magnitude should just not happen. The vast majority of significant earthquakes takes […]
Rock permeability in the geologic fault that unleashed China’s 2008 quake shows that fractures mend quicker than was thought. A devastating earthquake The 2008 Sichuan earthquake struck at 02:28:01 PM China Standard Time, with a magnitude of 8. It came as quite a surprise, as the area is not particularly active from a seismic point […]
It should be no surprise for anybody that a major earthquake is way overdue in LA; a study has shown that the area has a 99% chance of a big earthquake in the next 30 years (well, 25 years, since the study was conducted in 2008). Even with what should have been a huge wake […]
A recent study conducted by Californian and Japanese seismologists claims that stable fault areas might not be so stable, in terms of earthquake generation. The controversial findings suggest that creeping fault behavior (more on this in the next paragraph) is actually not only instable, but also capable of creating fast slipping earthquake ruptures. Faulty issues […]
In 2011, a 5.1 magnitude earthquake struck the Spanish city of Lorca, resulting in the loss of 9 lives and the injury of over 100 people. Now, researchers studying the case believe groundwater extraction played a crucial role in triggering this earthquake. A fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock, across which […]
It’s been less than a month since we published the last thing about the Cassini probe, and the amazing spacecraft has done it again; this time it detected a thin, oxygen atmosphere, on a moon of Saturn – Dione. The study was published in the Geophysical Research Letters At 1122 km in diameter, Dione is […]
The major fault in Sierra Nevada is believed to have been “quiet” for more than 3 million years has shown signs of becoming active and it is believed that it can trigger quakes that can reach magnitudes of up to 7. This comes as a rather unpleasant surprise to geologists, as well as the people […]
