earthquakes

There are scientists deliberately causing earthquakes in the Alps and they have a good reason for it

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In the heart of the Swiss Alps, more than a kilometer underground, a team of scientists is doing something that sounds almost insane: cause real earthquakes. And it is not that they want to destroy a country, but just the opposite: they want to understand earthquakes better to look for ‘warnings’ before they occur. Right now There is a lot of mystery around earthquakessince it is not well known how they are produced, and this means that we do not have clear information about when they will occur in a specific area. And it is something fundamental for us, since having a ‘witness’ to warn us that an earthquake is coming will allow us to notify the population so that they can protect themselves and avoid significant human and material losses. The idea. The FEAR project (Fault Activation an Earthquiake Rupture), led by researchers at ETH Zürich, are looking for answer the big question: how to detect the signs that announce an earthquake before it happens? For this, in the Bedretto’s underground laboratorygeologists have drilled a tunnel through an active fault. Through the controlled injection of water—and, soon, hot water—they are triggering microearthquakes of magnitudes less than 1. Their goal is to observe, with a densely distributed network of sensors, how ruptures occur and what physical conditions trigger them. But… Why the Alps? In this case, the natural conditions offered by the Alps are ideal to carry out these experiments. The enormous pressure of the mountains on the faults generates tensions that, with the slightest change, can release seismic energy. In this way it is known that in these conditions an earthquake is going to occur at some point and what they do is anticipate it and control it with many measuring equipment. Ground disturbed on purpose. The microearthquakes induced by the Swiss team have a curious parallel with another practice known for less scientific reasons: seismicity induced by the fracking industry. In regions such as Oklahoma and Texas, the discharge of wastewater into deep wells has also generated thousands of small earthquakes, providing scientists with valuable models of how water alters the friction between plates. But the FEAR project differs in detail with respect to what the industry can do for its work: absolute control of the environment. While industrial operations cause unwanted earthquakes, they cannot be controlled. But in the Alps we specifically seek to know what happens in the seconds before a rupture. Throughout 2024 and 2025, their tests will escalate until they cause earthquakes of magnitude 1, a level weak enough not to be perceptible on the surface, but enough to modify the stress state of a fault. If they manage to correlate specific patterns with the energy released, they could establish predictive models applicable to active seismic zones that would be an advance in the understanding of how the Earth releases its internal energy. They are not alone. In different countries there are many similar projects that try to understand earthquakes. For example, in Japan the Nankai Trough Seismogenic Zone Experiment (NanTroSEIZE) center pierces the seabed off the coast to reach the fault where future large earthquakes are expected to occur. Something fundamental when talking about a very affected area by earthquakes. In Iceland the DEEP EGS (Enhancing Geothermal Systems) program has also registered many microseisms due to the injection of geothermal fluidsoffering direct data on how faults become unstable. A great challenge. The challenge remains enormous: no model has managed to predict an earthquake with temporal and spatial precision. But experiments like the one at the Bedretto Underground Lab offer something that didn’t exist before: a way to study the actual physics of seismic fracture initiation. Images | Çağlar Oskay Marco Meyer In Xataka | China built the Three Gorges Dam with three objectives. Got a fourth: changing the Earth’s rotation

What is the Richter scale, how it works and why you should stop using it when talking about earthquakes

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We still often hear about “an earthquake measuring so many degrees on the Richter scale” in the news or when reading about an earthquake. This is incorrect for one or more reasons.. To understand why, we must delve into what the Richter scale is, when it is used and, above all, when it is not. What is the Richter scale The Richter scale is a scale used to measure the magnitude of an earthquake. According to defines the National Geological Institute (IGN), the magnitude of the earthquake is “a measure of the energy released by an earthquake and is determined from the signal recorded in a seismogram.” There are several magnitude scales for earthquakes, since earthquake waves can vary in their characteristics. Among them, the best known to the public is that of local Richter magnitudeor simply ML for “local magnitude.” Local, in this answer, refers to the fact that this scale is used to measure earthquakes that have been captured from close range. Specifically, it is used for those captured at less than 600 kilometers, according to the IGN. Who was Charles Francis Richter The name “Richter scale” refers to the American seismologist Charles Francis Richter. Born in 1900 in the state of Ohio, this American physicist and seismologist would leave as a legacy the first scale of its kind, a systematic way of measuring the strength of an earthquake. The seismographs They had been used for decades as a way to measure earthquakes, but it was in 1935 when Richter brought up the idea to establish a magnitude with which to measure these events. Starting from this idea, Richter would have the help of the German-American seismologist Beno Gutenberg to put it into practice. Charles F. Richter died in 1985 in the US state of California. The scale And how are the magnitudes calculated? The scale It is based on the logarithm of the amplitude of seismic waves. That is, the magnitude of an earthquake is proportional (logarithmically) to the height reached by the waves drawn by seismographs. The calculation must be “corrected” to, among other things, adjust it to a “type seismograph”. What we measure with the Richter scale, and what we don’t We pointed out before that the Richter scale, or ML, is used locally. And for seismologists, “local” refers to earthquakes originating no more than 600 kilometers of the seismograph that must measure it. But not all earthquakes that occur in “local” contexts are the same, so they are not all measured using this scale. The use of the ML scale is also limited with respect to the magnitude earthquake: it is only used to measure earthquakes of small or moderate magnitude (magnitudes between 2 and 6.5). The objective of measure the magnitude of an earthquake It is to get an idea of ​​its strength. To do this, scales such as the Richter scale use the waves generated by the earthquake, as captured by seismographs. The problem, as the experts realized, is that waves in large earthquakes do not always allow extrapolation of the magnitude using the Richter scale: sometimes the magnitude thus calculated overestimates the strength of the earthquake and sometimes the opposite occurs. Come on, although there are two earthquakes less than 600 kilometers from where they have been recorded with a seismograph, this scale is not always accurate for both. Sometimes this scale is fine, but other times the actual strength of the earthquake is higher or lower than what it measures. To compensate for the shortcomings of ML, geologists created different scalessuch as body wave magnitude (Mb) or surface wave magnitude (Ms). Each of these scales works in its own context, but the problem arises because none are universally applicable. To solve this, we then had to create the Mw scale, which we will talk about below. Magnitude and intensity To avoid confusion, we have to have clear concepts such as earthquake intensity. The intensity of an earthquake has its own scalebut it does not measure the strength of the earthquake but its impacts. The European Macroseismic Scale graduates in a scale from I to XII earthquakes based on the damage caused. The ML scale and the Mw scale As explained by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the limitations of the existing scales implied the need to create a new scale that would serve to cover these limitations. This is how the seismographic moment magnitude scale, or Mw, would have been born. This scale, although it is adjusted to “coincid” with the local magnitude scale where the latter is applicable, is based on a very different principle. Where the Richter scale converts recorded seismic waves into a magnitude, the Mw scale uses geological properties of tectonic movement. To do this, we start from the measurement of seismic momentthe product of the area traveled by the fault that has moved, the distance traveled in this displacement, and a measure of the stiffness of the rock that makes up the fault. This measurement is transformed through a logarithmic formula to obtain the magnitude of the moment (Mw) of the earthquake. Here, we can say that this scale is the closest thing to a universalsince it was created to be used in all earthquakes, even those with a magnitude greater than that supported by the Richter. Thus, it is currently the most used today to measure earthquakes, although in the news we will continue to hear about Richter’s. By saying degrees when they are magnitudes Other common mistake When talking about earthquakes and their scale, we talk about degrees, for example if we said “an earthquake measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale.” The origin of this common error is not clear, but some attribute it to the fact that there are scales (such as the one used to study the intensity of earthquakes) in which degrees are used. In Xataka | 0.2 magnitude points and 70 years of disaster preparedness: what differentiates the deadly tsunami of 1952 from the one that occurred … Read more

1,800 years ago China had one of the most intriguing technologies. Now is the point of resuscitating the dragon that detects earthquakes

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Almost two thousand years ago, during the Han dynastythe Chinese scholar ZHANG HENG He designed a device that, according to historical chronicles, could detect distant earthquakes and even point out his address. That invention, called HouFeng Didong Yiit was a mechanical gadget that had the dragon as the main actor. Now China is about to resurrect what a legend was believed. A erased prodigy of time. We talk about a mechanical system (an ornate vessel surrounded by eight dragons with suspended bronze balls, oriented towards mouths of toads) that would have been able to register imperceptible earthquakes in Luoyang, the imperial capital, with a precision that “touched the divine”, according to THE BOOK OF THE Subsections. However, its sudden disappearance of historical records and the impossibility of replicating it exactly led to its total elimination of the Chinese educational curriculum in 2017, relegating it to the field of legend. Today, a team led by Professor Xu Guodongfrom the Hebei Disaster Prevention Institute, seeks to recover not only its operation, but also Your place in history of science. The rebirth of a prodigious machine. To the question: How the hell will they replicate it? The researchers They explain that from ancient literary fragments and principles of modern structural dynamics. Thus, Xu and his team have proposed a functional model of the earthquakescomposed of three key subsystems: structure of excitementtransmission and closure. In the heart of the device he was A “Capital Pilar” that should not be interpreted as an unstable column, but as a pendulum -like arm (a kind of gigantic stick anchored to the ground) that amplified the seismic vibrations. With just 1 mm of displacement at the base, the tip of the pendulum moved up to five times more, activating a “L” levers system that released a ball in the mouth of the toad corresponding to the direction of the epicenter. A blocking mechanism prevented other dragons from reacting, thus respecting the Original description of “a dragon who speaks and seven that shut up.” Mathematical Wisdom. Team simulations indicate that the system responded reliably to displacements just 0.5 mmwithout emitting false alarms. Although modern knowledge of propagation of seismic waves suggest that a single instrument cannot determine with total precision the direction of the epicenter, Xu argues that the Historical records coincide with optimal geological alignments. As proof, appointment The Longxi earthquake From the year 138 AD, when the instrument would have detected a tremor 850 kilometers away, without feeling in Luoyang. The initial skepticism of the officials vanished when messengers on horseback confirmed The shaking days later. Even more revealing, he explains, is the jump in the frequency of earthquakes registered in the capital after the implementation of the artifact: in the previous 8 years they were only documented three local earthquakes; In the 58 years later, there were 23, in a region considered low seismicity. Zhang HENG: astronomer and political victim. ZHANG HENG It was not any inventor. His appointment as a great imperial astrologer in 115 (a position equivalent to the director of a modern national observatory) and his creation of an armilar sphere Able to map the sky with precision, they prove their domain in mathematics, astronomy and mechanics. But his invention could have been politically uncomfortable. In a context where natural disasters were interpreted as signals from heaven and threats to the mandate of the emperor, an instrument that “predicts” earthquakes could have been seen as subversive. Some scholars suggest that HENG’s abrupt retirement in 138 and his death the following year They were not casual. Xu duck that the loss of the original earthquakes (along with its technical diagrams) could be due to wars, political chaos or even the greed of powerful aristocratic families that would have hidden its existence. Recovered legacy. In a gesture loaded with symbolism, xu He recalled that only two bronze objects have been defined in Chinese history: Nine cauldrons of the Xia dynasty and this earthquakes. Now, the objective is ambitious: rebuilding the instrument using only materials and technical Advanced knowledge reached in ancient China. Beyond the material restoration, the project aspires to reinsert this jewel of engineering in the global narrative of science, as proof that humanity had already tried, long before satellites or artificial intelligence, unravel the Mysteries of the tremor From Earth. Along the way, the Heng’s featerased for centuries of oblivion, it could be closer to recovering its place among the great milestones of human thought. Image | KowlooneseSSPL In Xataka | The most revolutionary and rare writing machine was lost in 1940. Until someone received a message In Xataka | Of the Wright brothers to Wu Zhongyuan, a homemade helicopter

stop it with your reservation for earthquakes

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Over the last years the Government of Japan has had to use its emergency rice reserve to face precisely that, emergencies. He did it after The earthquake and tsamot who hit the east of the country in March 2011. And he did it again years later after the fades that made the ground tremble in Kumamoto. Now the authorities have been forced to resort again to its national silos, although not to respond to an unforeseen emergency. Or not at least one in the conventional sense of the word. Its objective is another: stop The increase of rice. A price: ¥ 3,939. That is what cost average at the end of February a sack of five kilos of rice in Japan: 3,939 yen, equivalent to 24.4 euros. It is a lot (a lot) more than just a year ago, when for that same grain a family paid around 2,000 yen (€ 12.4). At the beginning of March the Ministry of Agriculture made a survey again in a thousand stores and found that the 5 kg bag was already in 4,077 yen (€ 25.3). A percentage: 71%. Price climbing is not new. The Japanese have been seeing how to prepare a rice bowl comes out more and more expensivewith increases of 30, 40%… or even more pronounced. At the beginning of 2025 the basic government price index showed that the bags were registering year -on -year increases of the 71% In the 23 districts of Tokyo, a devastating fact for several reasons. The main one, the enormous weight that the grain has in the Japanese diet. Although It has been decreasing Over the years by the influence of foreign cuisine based on wheat flour and its current consumption is far from the peaks reached in the 60sthe per capita grain demand remains more than considerable in Japan: in 2020 It was around 51 kilos. As a reference, in 2022 an average Japanese consumed four more times than an American. One question: Why? The million dollar question. What does that increase in rice respond to? The truth is that there is no One reason. In the price escalation, a meteorology has influenced adverse For crops, the Increased demand In full tourist boom, the panic purchases (encouraged in 2024 for the threat of a “Megaterremoto”), the government policies that affect the crop, the shortage… And something else: The shadow of speculation. “Some companies and individuals have begun to trade with rice as if it were a money game,” I recognized Recently a The New York Times Masayuki Ogawa, professor of agricultural economy at the University of Ussunomiya. The Minister of Agriculture, Silviculture and Fisheries, Taku Etō, He has admitted in public that the situation is “extremely irregular”. “We are producing 180,000 extra tons and we have enough in stock. If one goes to the supermarket you can find rice. But the price is abnormally high: it costs double.” An exit: the auction. Before such a panorama, the Japanese government has opted for A radical output: use their emergency rice reserves, a fund that the country maintains Since 1995 to meet domestic demand in cases of Force Majeuresuch as bad harvests, meteorological disasters or earthquakes. In total round The million tons of grain, a wide stock that was useful for example after the earthquake and the tsamot that affected the islands 14 years ago. On this occasion it has not been necessary to tremble or lift huge waves. It has come that the price index is triggered. And yes It is exceptional. The country Never before He had used the rice reserve to reduce prices. A few days ago the government took auction near 165,000 tons of grain so that they could bid for it professional operators, distributors through which they expect the grain to reach supermarkets. The objective: cover the demand, weave prices and give a break to families. The call aroused the interest of seven bidders who ended up Something more than 90% of the rice available. In total that supposes 141,796 tons of rice An objective: repeat. It will not be the only government movement to reduce the price of rice. Tokyo plans to release 210,000 tons And the ministry already warns that if that measure does not work, it will be distributed even more. “We will do our best to solve the bottleneck in the supply chain and relieve consumer difficulties,” Eto emphasizesthat seeks a “balance between supply and demand”. For now the authorities have already decided to auction others 70,000 tons which remain to achieve their objective of 210,000 T injected into the market. It will do it a priori the last week of March. Once the government has completed the government will have mobilized more than The fifth part of its emergency reserves. Images | Steven Rieder (Flickr) 1 and 2 and Fidel Fernando (UNSPLASH) In Xataka | Japan is suffering a bankruptcy record from Ramen. And in part it is the result of the “1,000 yen barrier”

7,000 earthquakes in recent days, 11,000 evacuated and the possibility that the worst is to come

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After evacuating more than 11,000 people, half of the island’s population, Greece has had to declare the state of emergency on the island of Santorini. For two weeks, the island has suffered thousands of earthquakes. Only on January 4, there were 1,300 with magnitudes greater than 1. Only yesterday, smoke more than 200 and 28 of magnitude equal to or greater than 4. What is happening exactly in Santorini? A swarm. That is, a succession of thousands of earthquakes in a very concrete space and in a short space of time. As explained the geologist Nahúm Méndezis the direct consequence of the complex geology in the area. It is plaque tectonics, live and live. Nevertheless, As you recognize The volcanologist of the National Geographic Institute, Stavros Meletlidis, what is happening is not normal: “It is the first time that such an activity is recorded.” Are the prelude to something greater? It can be, but it doesn’t have to. In general terms, what we are seeing in Santorini is the accumulated product of the tensions that arise from the collision of the European plaque with the African. In the Santorini area, those pressures accumulate until the rocks “can no longer and break”, releasing large amounts of energy. As we have a good record of the seismic history of the island, we know that it is possible that a great earthquake is being prepared. Not so much of the last one: the Amorgos in 1956 reached 7.7caused more than 50 dead and waves up to 30 meters high. A great earthquake is not the only possibility. In This interferogram created from the Sentinel 1 datayou can see “a slight deformation in the northwest sector of the island after the seismic swarm that is happening on the island.” That, As experts point outit could be indicative of a deformation “due to the rise and location of the magma.” However, that does not mean that we are going to see an eruption. Volcanoes are extremely complex systems and “They can return to a state of ‘quiescence’ without erupting“We have seen it many times. And that is the big problem. When we talk about geology, our prelective capacity is very limited. After the eruption of La Palma, there were many information that indicated that seismic swarms ‘They warned’ for years What was going to happen. Unfortunately, the reality is that this can only be concluded to Toro Last. What can we do? As Méndez sayswe can only prepare for the different options that are forth from the table. One of the most exasperating things in geologies is that we still know too little and it is precisely in ignorance and uncertainty where monsters grow. Image | Tânia Mousinho | INSN In Xataka |

The earth’s crust is disappearing under California. The test is in its earthquakes

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The border between the mantle and the land cortex is a region that attracts interest of numerous geologists. Being so close and so far from the reach of the instruments that these scientists use perhaps a certain mysticism to this region, but above all, because the dynamism of The interactions Among the outermost layers of our planet makes this border a specially active region at the geological level. Scratching the bark. Now, a new study He has revealed A new aspect of this interaction. He has done it in the Sierra Nevada Californiana, or rather under this Sierra, where they have found evidence of how the mantle “pela” the earth’s crust. Delamination Geologists believe that, from time to time, fragments of the lithosphere end up detaching themselves and sinking into the upper layers of the terrestrial mantle. This process is known as alamination or sinking of the lithosphere and could be responsible for the notable differences in the thickness of the oceanic crust in contrast to the continental cortex, among other characteristics of the geology and geography of the planet. Generally, this process is seen as a “drip”: the heaviest rock of the cortex loses consistency and ends up detaching from the lithosphere to sink into the mantle, composed of less dense materials. However, Maybe this delamination is more abruptsomething like the terrestrial mantle “pelara” the cortex. Seismic waves. As usual in this type of studies, the team analyzed the way in which seismic waves move through the interior layers of the Earth in order to study factors such as the composition and density of these layers. Sierra Nevada is a seismically active region, which implies a greater ease to compile data in this way. The researchers responsible for the study They combined various sources of seismic data in their study, starting with this analysis, called the receiving function. The team combined it with the exhaustive catalog data of the Advanced National Seismic System (COMCAT). In this catalog they detected the presence of a “band of seismicity” in the region, located from 40 kilometers under the surface, which concentrated small earthquakes of magnitudes between 1.9 and 3.2. Break, I don’t drip. Thanks to the differences detected through the receiving functions, the equipment was able to find a differentiated layer in the mantle, a not so differentiated layer as it extends to the north and that is consistent with the hypothesis that part of the lithosphere in the South Zone broke out of the cortex several million years ago. The small earthquakes on the other hand, could be indicative that this detachment was made for breakage instead of drip, according to the authors of the study. The details of this analysis were published In an article In the magazine Geophysical Research Letters. Strengthening the hypothesis. The evidence is not yet conclusive as the team admits, but they add to the already numerous that support the hypothesis that the discontinuity of Mohorovičić (the border between the cortex and the upper mantle of the earth) is not abrupt under the mountain range from Sierra Nevada, but rather gradual. In Xataka | We knew that Yellowstone hid an immense volcano but not the place he would explode. Until now Image | Arttower

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