07-10-2008, 04:49 AM
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#2
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Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Okolona, Ky.
Posts: 6,156
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Quake early warning sign found...
Discovery may lead to quake early-warning system
Wed Jul 9, 2008 WASHINGTON - Scientists working at California's San Andreas Fault have detected subtle geological changes occurring hours before an earthquake that could enable them to develop an early-warning system aimed at saving lives.
Quote:
Their instruments detected geological changes most likely caused by tiny fractures forming in the rock ahead of an impending earthquake due to stress in the Earth's crust, according to seismologist Paul Silver of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, one of the researchers. "It's the opening up of cracks before an earthquake," Silver said in a telephone interview.
The research, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, was conducted using wells dug 0.6 miles (1 km) deep into the quake-prone fault at Parkfield, California. Their equipment generated and recorded seismic waves before, during and after two small quakes, allowing them to observe these small, predictive geological changes.
In the first case, the geological signals occurred 10 hours before a magnitude 3 quake in December 2005. The same sort of signals also occurred two hours before a magnitude 1 quake that happened five days later, the researchers said. "We are very encouraged by these observations, and we are planning for more experiments to confirm whether these changes are part of the general physical processes before an earthquake," seismologist Fenglin Niu of Rice University in Houston said in a telephone interview.
EVACUATIONS?
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Earthquake causes coral reefs to die
Linear Mode
