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Thursday, 17 July 2008 09:55 |
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Photo: CIW | Paul Silver and former postdoctoral fellow Fenglin Niu, now at Rice University, are coauthors of a paper in the 10 July issue of Nature in which they report on changes in the speed of seismic waves that preceded two small earthquakes by ten and two hours, measurements that are encouraging in the field of earthquake prediction. Silver commented in the CIW press release: "Detecting stress changes before an earthquake has been the holy grail in earthquake seismology for years and has motivated our research. We used a specially designed system to generate and record seismic waves before, during, and after two earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault. It's been shown in the lab that the speed of seismic waves varies with the level of stress, due to the effect on the opening and closing of cracks. So measurements of changes in wave speed should, in principle, constitute a "stress meter" that could provide an indication of an imminent earthquake."
For more information see the CIW press release or a video interview with Silver. Click here for an article in Time Magazine. |
