Friday, May 20, 2011

Surprise! The Japan Earthquake surprised everybody

Article

There are some good quotes here.

"Unfortunately, the quake happened where they hadn't inferred there was a stuck point—it was further away from shore," said Dr. Simons. Plus, the 9.0-magnitude temblor turned out to be 33 times as powerful as the expected 8.0-magnitude temblor.


"It's taught us a lesson that our short human experience and earthquake records can only provide a small window" into geological time, said Dr. Elliott.

Well, maybe this gets us away from our 'See Fault' approach -- I see a fault, therefore, an earthquake will happen on it.  Maybe it won't!

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