Earthquakes are one of the most destructive forces on Earth. They happen quite frequently, though most of them are relatively minor. Powerful quakes, depending on where they happen, cause severe damage, toppling buildings and sometimes killing many thousands of people. They happen when tension created by the movement of the Earth’s tectonic plates is released, causing the rocks to shift and break suddenly. The incredible amount of force required to break the rocks is what makes earthquakes so devastating.
If your heart beats rapidly during an earthquake, it still doesn’t compete with high-frequency waves generated by the quake. These waves shake the ground faster than your ticker’s thrumming and cause the most damage to smaller structures, such as houses.
Researchers now have a new explanation for the source of these poorly understood high-frequency seismic waves. The longer a fault heals between earthquakes, the faster the waves once the fault finally breaks again, according to a new study detailed in the Oct. 31 issue of the journal Nature.
“We can think of a fault as just as crack or a cut in the ground. When they heal, it may not be all that different than how a cut in your skin heals. There are physical and chemical changes that occur right on the surface,” said Gregory McLaskey, lead study author and a postdoctoral researcher at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.
Though the next quake may not be bigger in terms of magnitude, it could be much more intense, with more rapid shaking, he said.
“It doesn’t just affect the strength of it, it affects the way the ground will shake when it ruptures. The more the fault has healed, the more rapid vibrations and jolts will be produced when the earthquake does come,” McLaskey told OurAmazingPlanet.
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