Headline
The Ultimate Stress Reliever
Reporting in the journal Science, researchers say they’ve discovered a surprising wrinkle in the geologic story behind one of the most devastating earthquakes in recent memory: the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake that spawned 130-foot tsunami waves, killed 15,800 people and led to a crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The researchers determined that current shear stress on the fault that generated the earthquake is nearly zero. In other words, the violent spasm that released the earthquake also shook out all the pent up stress on the fault. Alan McStravick, writing in a recent article for the website Red Orbit, explained why this was such a shocker: “The paper’s presentation of this fact flies in the face of the prevailing wisdom that earthquakes will typically only release a portion of … Read entire article »
Featured
Field Update: Like Threading a Needle from 7 kilometers away
The goal we are working towards on the JFAST2 expedition is to install an observatory of temperature sensors across the fault zone that slipped more than 50 meters during the March 2011 … Read more »
Field Update: Return to the Japan Trench
[Editor's Note: Patrick Fulton is a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics. He was part of an expedition last spring aboard a deep sea drilling ship to … Read more »
Possible New Human Species Discovered
A new study describes human fossils from southern China that have a blending of modern and archaic features. The fossils date from between 11,500 and 14,500 years ago, a time when it … Read more »
Latest
Earthquake Signals Tectonic Plate Ripping Apart
Three papers in this week’s issue of the journal Nature present startling new findings about an earthquake that struck the Indian Ocean off the coast of Sumatra last April. As reported by Andrea … Read entire article »
Desperate Measure Yields Insights for Delta Restoration
In late spring 2011, one of the largest pulses of water in recorded history traveled down the Mississippi River, threatening the ports, industries, farms and towns of the river’s lower reaches, including … Read entire article »
Field Update: Drilling Through the Japan Earthquake Fault
After successfully reentering the wellhead on the edge of the Japan Trench on the seafloor 6926 meters (4.3 miles) below the ship, we began drilling. The goal: to drill ~850 meters (2800 … Read entire article »