A post made on yahoo.com showing the chaos of the recent Earth-Quake in Mexico, and that has been raising curiosity all over the world. Recent discoveries also has it that the largest Earthquakes in the history of the North American continent might hit them very soon, and as thus everyone is expected to be on a look out for it is coming soon.
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The last time the Juan
de Fuca oceanic plate jolted under the North American plate, unleashing a
9.0 earthquake, was in 1700. With the event scheduled to happen once every 500
years or so, we are due for another any day now. Although it's not clear what
will happen when this mega quake does hit, researchers at the University of
Washington recently presented 50 possible scenarios of how the event
might unfold.
Earthquakes are
typically measured using the Richter scale, named after the geologist who
invented it in the 1930s. The scale is numbered from 0-10, although no
magnitude 10 earthquake has ever been observed, making a 9.0 one of the most
powerful quakes in recorded history. The predicted earthquake, dubbed the
“Really Big One,” will take place where the Juan de Fuca and North American
plates meet along Cascadia subduction zone, just north of the San Andreas fault
line. The earthquake would affect those living in coastal Washington, Oregon,
British Columbia and Northern California, and a 2015 New Yorker article
predicted the quake and its subsequent tsunami could affect 7 million
people.
There’s no saying
exactly how this quake will strike exactly. Geologists typically use past earthquakes to predict future ones,
but no recording devices were around to take data on the 1700 Cascadia
earthquake. The researchers at the University of Washington hope to address
this problem.
The team presented
both best- and worst-case scenarios of a potential 9.0 earthquake on the Cascadia
subduction zone at the Geological Society of
America's annual meeting on October 24. Their 50 simulations use
different factor combinations, such as where the epicenter may be, how far
inland the earthquake would travel, and where along the fault the shaking would
be the strongest. They were run on supercomputers at the Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory and the University of Texas, Austin. Although other reports
have looked into possible scenarios of this predicted earthquake, this is the
most in-depth scenario prediction to date, The
Independent reported.
“With just a few
simulations you didn’t know if you were seeing a best-case, a worst-case or an
average scenario,” explained lead study researcher Erin Wirth in a recent statement. “This
project has really allowed us to be more confident in saying that we’re seeing
the full range of possibilities.”
Some of the report’s
predictions include that the quake will be less severe in Seattle if the
epicenter were beneath the tip of northwest Washington, although the sediment
grounds in Seattle would cause it to shake more than areas on hard rocky
mountaintops. Shaking in Seattle could last as long as 100 seconds. The
simulations also predict that coastal areas would be hit the hardest.
Although all science suggests that the Really Big One will
occur, and that this will likely be sooner than later, there really isn’t a
need for panic. These simulations are just one part of a huge collaborative
project known as the M9 Project. Created at the University of Washington, this
project aims to develop ways to better predict an earthquake as soon as
possible to give people ample time to seek safety. Oral history of Native
American tribes living on the Pacific West Coast in 1700 describe entire tribes
being swept away with post-earthquake tsunamis, but 500 years of geological and
technological advancements point to the next quake being far less devastating.
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