Caltech

Articles tagged with "earthquakes"

02/11/2013

Under the Hood of the Earthquake Machine

Douglas Smith

What makes an earthquake go off? Why are earthquakes so difficult to forecast? Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Geophysics Nadia Lapusta gives us a close-up look at the moving parts, as it were, at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, February 13, 2013, in Caltech's Beckman Auditorium. Admission is free.

08/10/2006

Researchers Announce New Way to Assess How Buildings Would Stand Up in Big Quakes

How much damage will certain steel-frame, earthquake-resistant buildings located in Southern California sustain when a large temblor strikes? It's a complicated, multifaceted question, and researchers from the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Pau, France, have answered it with unprecedented specificity using a new modeling protocol.

06/23/2006

Media to Learn Newest Ways to Report on Earthquakes at Open House and Workshop

Jill Perry

The California Institute of Technology will unveil its newly renovated Earthquake Media Center to the news media at 9:30 a.m. June 29. This Open House event will include a free "Earthquakes 101" Workshop for the media where Caltech and U.S. Geological Survey scientists will discuss a wide range of topics to help new and veteran earthquake reporters cover the next major earthquake.

04/04/2006

Caltech Unveils New Virtual Exhibit for Historical Earthquake Archives

Deborah Williams-Hedges

April 18 marks the centennial of the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake. In commemoration of that event and the landmark developments that followed it, the California Institute of Technology Archives is presenting a new digital exhibit, Documenting Earthquakes: A Virtual Exhibit in Six Parts. This online display, for use by the public, media, and educators, can be viewed at http://archives.caltech.edu/exhibits/earthquake/index.html.

03/30/2006

Fault That Produced Largest Aftershock Ever Recorded Still Poses Threat to Sumatra

Robert Tindol

A mere three months after the giant Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and tsunami of December 2004, tragedy struck again when another great earthquake shook the area just to the south, killing over 2,000 Indonesians. Although technically an aftershock of the 2004 event, the 8.7-magnitude Nias-Simeulue earthquake just over a year ago was itself one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded. Only six others have had greater magnitudes.

03/01/2006

Study of 2004 Tsunami Disaster Forces Rethinking of Theory of Giant Earthquakes

Robert Tindol

The Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of December 26, 2004, was one of the worst natural disasters in recent memory, mostly on account of the devastating tsunami that followed it. A group of geologists and geophysicists, including scientists at the California Institute of Technology, has delineated the full dimensions of the fault rupture that caused the earthquake.

11/29/2005

Powerful New Supercomputer Analyzes Earthquakes

Jill Perry

One of the most powerful computer clusters in the academic world has been created at the California Institute of Technology in order to unlock the mysteries of earthquakes.

05/19/2005

Research on Sumatran Earthquakes Uncovers New Mysteries about Workings of Earth

Robert Tindol

The Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of December 26 was an unmitigated human disaster. But three new papers by an international group of experts show that the huge data return could help scientists better understand extremely large earthquakes and the disastrous tsunamis that can be associated with them.

04/25/2005

Seismic experiments provide new clues to earthquake wave directionality and growth speed

In recent years, seismologists thought they were getting a handle on how an earthquake tends to rupture in a preferred direction along big strike-slip faults like the San Andreas. This is important because the direction of rupture has a profound influence on the distribution of ground shaking. But a new study could undermine their confidence a bit.

12/30/2004

The Science behind the Aceh Earthquake

Kerry Sieh, the Robert P. Sharp Professor of Geology at the California Institute of Technology and a member of Caltech's Tectonics Observatory, has conducted extensive research on both the Sumatran fault and the Sumatran subduction zone. Below, Sieh provides scientific background and context for the December 26, 2004 earthquake that struck Aceh, Indonesia.

07/21/2004

San Andreas Earthquakes Have Almost Always Been Big Ones, Paleoseismologists Discover

Robert Tindol

A common-sense notion among many Californians is that frequent small earthquakes allow a fault to slowly relieve accumulating strain, thereby making large earthquakes less likely. New research suggests that this is not the case for a long stretch of the San Andreas fault in Southern California.