|
About | Contact | Mongabay on Facebook | Mongabay on Twitter | Subscribe |
|
|
Earthquakes can break speed limit mongabay.com August 16, 2007
Using more computer modeling, improved seismograms and new imaging techniques, Das showed that rupture rates during a 2001 earthquake in Tibet may have been as fast as 6 kilometers per second along some straight portions of the strike-slip fault -- more than twice the conventionally held "speed limit" for quakes.
Das suggests that the highly destructive 1906 San Francisco earthquake along the San Andreas Fault may have also ruptured faster than was previously believed, increasing its destructiveness. Das says the results could help seismologists locate the world's most dangerous faults and better predict what areas are most at risk of damage from earthquakes. "We need to apply the same analysis to other great strike-slip faults around the world, such as the more than 10,000-km-long Himalayan-Alpine seismic belt" she writes. "We also need to develop a measure of the "straightness" of faults and the length of the straight portion required for such fast rupture speeds." CITATION: Shamita Das (2007). "The Need to Study Speed" 17 AUGUST 2007 VOL 317 SCIENCE 889-890 10.1126/science.1142143 Comments? News options
Tags: earthquakes disasters earth science green News index | RSS | News Feed | Twitter | Home Advertisements: Organic Apparel from Patagonia | Insect-repelling clothing
|
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 
Photos HIGH RESOLUTION PHOTOS / PRINTS 
CALENDARS 
CANVAS BAGS 
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Copyright mongabay 2010 Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions generated from mongabay.com operations (server, data transfer, travel) are mitigated through an association with Anthrotect, an organization working with Afro-indigenous and Embera communities to protect forests in Colombia's Darien region. Anthrotect is protecting the habitat of mongabay's mascot: the scale-crested pygmy tyrant. |
