Sara S
04-24-2012, 11:26 PM
Earthquakes along San Andres fault could be more powerful than what scientists thought possible.
Referring to the 8.6 Sumatra temblor on April 12, 2012, Lucile Jones, Science Advisor for Risk Reduction at the USGS told ABC News -
snip
What’s more interesting for scientists, Jones said, is the type of quake yesterday’s 8.6 temblor was. The biggest quakes – like the 9.0 that caused devastating damage in Japan last year – occur when one tectonic plate moves underneath another. Yesterday’s earthquake was a strike-slip quake, which happens when two plates slide horizontally past each other.
“Until yesterday, we didn’t think a strike-slip quake could possibly reach the magnitude of 8.6,” Jones said. “That was wrong – apparently it can, and that’s something we’ll really have to study.”
The implications of this development could be serious. The San Andreas fault, which runs through California, is a strike-slip fault. It was previously thought that a big quake along that fault wouldn’t get into the 8.5 or higher range, but in light of yesterday’s quake in the Indian Ocean, that thinking might have to change.
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/04/what-do-all-the-recent-earthquakes-mean/
Referring to the 8.6 Sumatra temblor on April 12, 2012, Lucile Jones, Science Advisor for Risk Reduction at the USGS told ABC News -
snip
What’s more interesting for scientists, Jones said, is the type of quake yesterday’s 8.6 temblor was. The biggest quakes – like the 9.0 that caused devastating damage in Japan last year – occur when one tectonic plate moves underneath another. Yesterday’s earthquake was a strike-slip quake, which happens when two plates slide horizontally past each other.
“Until yesterday, we didn’t think a strike-slip quake could possibly reach the magnitude of 8.6,” Jones said. “That was wrong – apparently it can, and that’s something we’ll really have to study.”
The implications of this development could be serious. The San Andreas fault, which runs through California, is a strike-slip fault. It was previously thought that a big quake along that fault wouldn’t get into the 8.5 or higher range, but in light of yesterday’s quake in the Indian Ocean, that thinking might have to change.
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/04/what-do-all-the-recent-earthquakes-mean/