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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.
An aftershock is an earthquake that occurs after a previous earthquake, the mainshock. Rapid changes of stress between rocks, and the stress from the original earthquake are the main causes of these aftershocks, [35] along with the crust around the ruptured fault plane as it adjusts to the effects of the mainshock. [32]
An earthquake is a phenomenon that results from the sudden release of stored energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. At the Earth's surface, earthquakes may manifest themselves by a shaking or displacement of the ground and sometimes cause tsunamis, which may lead to loss of life and destruction of property. An earthquake is ...
Moderately damaging earthquakes strike between New York and Wilmington, Delaware, about twice a century, the USGS said, and smaller earthquakes are felt in the region roughly every two to three years.
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.
Foreshock activity has been detected for about 40% of all moderate to large earthquakes, [2] and about 70% for events of M>7.0. [3] They occur from a matter of minutes to days or even longer before the main shock; for example, the 2002 Sumatra earthquake is regarded as a foreshock of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake with a delay of more than two years between the two events.
A tectonic earthquake begins by an initial rupture at a point on the fault surface, a process known as nucleation. The scale of the nucleation zone is uncertain, with some evidence, such as the rupture dimensions of the smallest earthquakes, suggesting that it is smaller than 100 m while other evidence, such as a slow component revealed by low-frequency spectra of some earthquakes, suggest ...
The magnitude of an earthquake depends in part on the length of the geological fault on which the quake occurs. Longer faults result in stronger earthquakes. There are no known faults capable of ...