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Midwestern Fault Zones Are Still Alive
sciencehabit writes "The occasional quakes rattling the New Madrid Seismic Zone, a series of Midwestern faults named for a small town in the Missouri Bootheel, aren't aftershocks of the massive quakes that rocked our fledgling nation more than 2 centuries ago, a new study suggests. In other words, modern-day quakes are signs that the faults in the region are still accumulating stress—and sometimes releasing it as fresh rumblings."
Can't be all that juice pumped into the ground.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Seriously, who writes this stuff? I remember a minor earthquake we had in Michigan in the mid-80s. Why would they suddenly stop? Geological activity occurs over geological time scales, which is to say, thousands, even millions of years.
It's all y'all's fault.
From the article ... "But some scientists don't find the team's results convincing."
There were 4 earthquakes along the New Madrid Fault in the 1811-1812 timeframe which ere commented to have rung church bells in Washington DC, as well as modified the course of the Mississippi River. Harder bedrock (unlike all this nice, soft sandstone in the west coast) mean the shock is felt much stronger and further. I think I'd cut them some slack. An 8.0 along the fault would make Loma Prieta (1989) and Northridge (1994) look like picnics.
They should be considered sleeping or dormant, not inactive.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The best thing that could happen to Midwest geography would be growing a mountain range... An east-west one, so that it'd be tolerable in winter, as long as you're south of it, and tolerable in summer, as long as you're north.
You and Lex Luthor think alike.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old, or about 1/22,500,000th older than it was when the last major earthquake hit in New Madrid.
For comparison, that's like being surprised that the US is roughly the same as it was 5.5 minutes ago.
Other fun Deep Time trivia: if the entire Earth's history were compressed into a 24 hour day, with the start being midnight yesterday and the current time being midnight tonight, then its surface was overrun with dinosaurs at 11:40PM. Modern Man came on the scene around 11:59:56PM.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
my home town. nothing happens here. ever.
The current building code in St Louis is written with earthquakes in mind, it's ust that there are a lot of older buildings that are still vulnerable.
I think the 1700 Cascadia earthquake off the Oregon/Washington coast probably qualifies as the largest in recorded history in the continental US. It hit at about 9:00 pm, January 26, 1700 and was an estimated magnitude of 8.7-9.2. (The reason the time is known so accurately is that the tsunami it caused was recorded in Japanese records.)
Still have a few oil company shills lurking the influential threads of Slashdot, I see.
There is a LOT of oil money from the Gulf trying to put a lid on Fracking. Nice to see the AC's are getting paid handsomely to try and stomp out independence from a barbaric region of the earth.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Liar liar well on fire:
What are you, ten?
So sad you can't even do basic Google searches, all of your links have been
debunked.
You really will believe anything your masters spoon-feed you, won't you? What a shame that critical thinking has been so totally disabled by the green movement, once you strong and useful, now just a tool to be used by Arab oil interests to stop franking from slowing down the money flow.
I guess you have no interests in stopping the flow of money from the west going to prop up cultures that horribly abuse women and homosexuals. You may as well be casting stones yourself.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley