A seismic wave is an elastic disturbance that propagates through the Earth or along its surface as a result of sudden stress changes, typically from fault rupture, volcanic activity, or anthropogenic sources such as explosions. Governed by the equations of elastodynamics, seismic waves are categorized into body waves (P and S waves) and surface waves (Rayleigh and Love waves), each with distinct particle motion, dispersion, and attenuation characteristics. Their propagation properties—velocity, amplitude, frequency content, and scattering—are strongly controlled by the elastic moduli, density, anisotropy, and heterogeneity of the medium, making seismic waves a primary observational phenomenon in seismology and Earth structure studies.
As seismic waves travel through Earth, they gradually lose energy, a process called attenuation. That energy loss doesn't happen uniformly—some features in the crust sap far more energy from seismic waves than others. Researchers ...
Earth Sciences
May 11, 2026
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The Hayward fault, part of the larger San Andreas fault system, runs 74 miles through the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. The fault is overdue for an earthquake that could cause extensive damage to such a dense population ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 27, 2026
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While analyzing strong-motion data close to fault lines, a group of researchers at Kyoto University noticed something unexpected: a negative phase in the waveforms, a pattern that did not conform to the existing interpretations ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 23, 2026
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A new study by scientists in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) shows that when a pressure disturbance moves across an ultrasoft elastic material, such as a gel or a biological tissue, ...
Condensed Matter
Apr 13, 2026
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Recent seismic imaging off Vancouver Island has revealed something extraordinary: a tear in the subducting oceanic plate beneath the Cascadia Subduction Zone. The finding briefly raised the public's hopes that Cascadia might ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 10, 2026
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Slow roiling convection currents deep within Earth's mantle, which are associated with the movements of tectonic plates, also deform the material of the mantle itself. Now, a new study in The Seismic Record confirms that ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 2, 2026
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An earthquake typically sets off ruptures that ripple out from its underground origins. But on rare occasions, seismologists have observed quakes that reverse course, further shaking up areas that they passed through only ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 18, 2026
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There's been a seismic shift in science, with scientists developing new AI tools and applying AI to just about any question that can be asked. Researchers are now putting actual seismic waves to work, using data from the ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 12, 2026
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Stanford researchers have created the first-ever global map of a rare earthquake type that occurs not in Earth's crust but in our planet's mantle, the layer sandwiched between the thin crust and Earth's molten core. The new ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 5, 2026
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An international research team may have found an explanation for seismic anomalies, the noticeable deviations in the behavior of earthquake waves, in Earth's inner core.
Earth Sciences
Dec 10, 2025
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