 |
|
st_swithin
|
|
10069
Nov 2002 time: 05:32
|
|
Perhaps it is a harbinger of things to come...
Or perhaps it is merely flatus tectonics - a little gas disguised as a heart attack.
We've had cleansing fires in San Diego and a quake in SLO - should be be prepared for some plagues of pestilence? I just want to know if I should ask for duct tape and plastic sheets for Xmas.
|
|
|  |
 |
|
st_swithin
|
|
10069
Nov 2002 time: 05:32
|
|
With my luck, California wouldn't sink - Los Angeles would slide up next to San Francisco and the ensuing culture clash would spark a mini-civil war.
|
|
|  |
 |
|
WhiteBandit
|
 |
Southern California
Jul 2002 time: 21:32
|
|
quote: Originally posted by Gatekeeper
Actually, quakes like this are supposed to good in the long run, because it's thought that they allow the earth to let off a little "steam," which, in turn, prevents or delays the "Big One."
Gatekeeper |
Nope.
The Big One is supposed to occur on a completely different fault system (San Andreas). The San Simeon quake that happened yesterday wasn't on the San Andreas.
The current predictions pin the mystical "Big One" to be roughly an 8.1 on the moment magnitude scale. If the 6.5 that happened in San Simeon was located on the San Andreas, it wouldn't of released any energy for the Big One!
Basically, you all probably know the scales geologists use to measure earthquakes is logrithmic. An increase in magnitude by a whole number represents a 30-fold increase in energy released. So a 7.0 releases 30 times as much energy as a 6.0. An 8.0 releases 900 times as much energy as 6.0!! So we would need roughly 900 of those 6.0's to equal the energy stored up for an 8.0! As you can see, one "measily" 6.0 wouldn't let off any steam at all.
However, this quake did not happen on the San Andreas, it happened on another fault system (at this point I'm not sure which one, looking at a geologic map, it looks like it was within the "Nacimiento Fault Zone").
The San Andreas Fault actually crosses right behind my school (Cal State San Bernardino) and we do quite a bit of research on it. I just worked on a project last week where we were studing Elastic Rebound Theory in which we used GPS equipment to track movement across a variety of faults in Southern California.
A 1mb Flash File (zipped up) is located here that talks about Elastic Rebound Theory. Anyway, interesting stuff!
http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/research/d...sfiles/grid.zip
On a positive note, it is a miracle more people weren't killed or injured since this happened in the middle of the day and was still quite a powerful earthquake. This 6.4 quake in Turkey killed 147! So at the same time it is a testiment to many of our building codes.
Your resident geologist ,
WB
|
|
|  |
 |
|  |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:32. Apolyton Time is 00:32. |
top of page
|
| archivepost |
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|