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An earthquake is caused by a sudden slip on a fault. Tectonic plates are always slowly moving, but they can get stuck at their edges due to friction.When the stress on the edge of a tectonic plate overcomes the friction, there is an earthquake that releases energy in waves that travel through the Earth's crust and cause the shaking that is felt.
These waves can travel through any type of material, including fluids, and can travel nearly 1.7 times faster than the S waves. In air, they take the form of sound waves, hence they travel at the speed of sound. Typical speeds are 330 m/s in air, 1450 m/s in water and about 5000 m/s in granite.
P waves travel through the fluid layers of the Earth's interior, and yet they are refracted slightly when they pass through the transition between the semisolid mantle and the liquid outer core. As a result, there is a P wave " shadow zone " between 103° and 142° [ 5 ] from the earthquake's focus, where the initial P waves are not registered ...
[3] [1] S-waves, in contrast, are constrained to solids and reveal information about the Earth's rigidity and internal composition, including the discovery of the outer core's liquid state since they cannot pass through it. [3] The study of these waves' travel times and reflections offers a reconstructive view of the Earth's layered velocity ...
Seismology (/ s aɪ z ˈ m ɒ l ə dʒ i, s aɪ s-/; from Ancient Greek σεισμός (seismós) meaning "earthquake" and -λογία (-logía) meaning "study of") is the scientific study of earthquakes (or generally, quakes) and the generation and propagation of elastic waves through planetary bodies.
P waves travel with motion in the same direction as the wave propagates and S waves travel with motion perpendicular to the wave propagation (transverse). [ 6 ] The P waves are refracted by the liquid outer core of the Earth and are not detected between 104° and 140° (between approximately 11,570 and 15,570 km or 7,190 and 9,670 mi) from the ...
The Sun is said to be extremely noisy, but we can’t hear it since sound doesn’t travel through space. Scientists at the University of Sheffield decided to use vibrations within our star's ...
Rayleigh waves are generated by the interaction of P- and S- waves at the surface of the earth, and travel with a velocity that is lower than the P-, S-, and Love wave velocities. Rayleigh waves emanating outward from the epicenter of an earthquake travel along the surface of the earth at about 10 times the speed of sound in air (0.340 km/s ...