Glacial lakes form when meltwater is trapped behind a dam, usually glacial ice, bedrock or a type of moraine (terminal types being an unconsolidated pile of debris at the maximum extent of the glacier). When a dam fails, ...
Earthquakes often occur along plate boundaries, when sudden movements of the "stuck" plates release elastic strain energy, sending out seismic waves that result in the ground shaking familiar to many worldwide. More rarely, ...
On the morning of July 4, 2019, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck the Searles Valley in California's Mojave Desert, with impacts felt across Southern California. About 34 hours later on July 5, the nearby city of Ridgecrest ...
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A newly discovered impact crater below the seafloor hints at the possibility that more than one asteroid hit Earth during the time when dinosaurs went extinct.
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Aug 18, 2022
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In May 1997, a large earthquake shook the Kermadec Islands region in the South Pacific Ocean. A little over 20 years later, in September 2018, a second big earthquake hit the same location, its waves of seismic energy emanating ...
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A study of two powerful earthquakes in adjacent areas off the Alaska Peninsula in 2020 and 2021 shows a connection between the two. It also suggests they may be a part of an 80-year rupture cascade along the fault.
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Environmental scientist Marc-Antoine Longpré with City University of New York is suggesting in a Perspective piece published in the journal Science that lessons can be learned from the unexpected eruption of Cumbre Vieja ...
In Earth's crust, tectonic blocks slide and grind past each other like enormous ships loosed from anchor. Earthquakes are generated along these fault zones when enough stress builds for a block to stick, then suddenly slip.
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When humans pump large volumes of fluid into the ground, they can set off potentially damaging earthquakes, depending on the underlying geology. This has been the case in certain oil- and gas-producing regions, where wastewater, ...
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On April 30, 2018, on the eastern flank of Hawaii's Kīlauea volcano, lava suddenly drained from a crater that had been spewing lava for more than three decades. Then the floor of the crater, named Pu'u'ō'ō, dropped out.
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An earthquake (also known as a tremor or temblor) is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes are recorded with a seismometer, also known as a seismograph. The moment magnitude of an earthquake is conventionally reported, or the related and mostly obsolete Richter magnitude, with magnitude 3 or lower earthquakes being mostly imperceptible and magnitude 7 causing serious damage over large areas. Intensity of shaking is measured on the modified Mercalli scale.
At the Earth's surface, earthquakes manifest themselves by shaking and sometimes displacing the ground. When a large earthquake epicenter is located offshore, the seabed sometimes suffers sufficient displacement to cause a tsunami. The shaking in earthquakes can also trigger landslides and occasionally volcanic activity.
In its most generic sense, the word earthquake is used to describe any seismic event — whether a natural phenomenon or an event caused by humans — that generates seismic waves. Earthquakes are caused mostly by rupture of geological faults, but also by volcanic activity, landslides, mine blasts, and nuclear experiments. An earthquake's point of initial rupture is called its focus or hypocenter. The term epicenter refers to the point at ground level directly above the hypocenter.
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