Interesting find.

[Bubblegum Bandit]

So, I'm perusing CNN.com when I hit reafresh and there's a banner across the top for breaking news that says Indonesia has just had a 7.7 magnitude earthquake. No article up yet, so I proceed to the USGS website to see if they have anything yet. Sure enough, its in the middle of the Ocean so the Tsunami of a year ago comes to mind. Plus my boss is in Sri Lanka right now looking at some work we are going to do. I peruse around and find Tsunami warning links. All of them say no worries, historical data show's that location and magnitude will not = Tsunami.

 

Anyway, so I'm cruising around the earthquake information when I come upon this page:

 

http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/qed/

 

I had no idea that earthquakes were that common. That map shows earthquakes in the last 8 - 30 days with magnitude > 2.5. Kinda cool how you can see the fault lines and pretty much 90% of the quakes are right on top of them. Can anyone figure out where the "ring of fire" is from this map???

[NOFX]

ahh geology, my favorite subject in college. The ring of fire is the big circle in the middle, the bottom fault doesnt have any earthquakes, but the ring goes along japan up the coast, across to alaska and down the coast.

 

It was really cool, the day I was in the smithsonian museum an earth quake hit in China. and we could see varies seismograph's throught the world. the one closest to the quake was going nuts, while the one here in the states could pick up hte movement but it was very small.

 

did you know that is how they can tell the location of an earthquake. 3 seismograph's placed in various places. Sort of like how GPS works.

[Bubblegum Bandit]

Yeah, I knew where the ring of fire was, was just my way of pointing out how obvious it was by looking at that map.

 

did you know that is how they can tell the location of an earthquake.  3 seismograph's placed in various places.  Sort of like how GPS works.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

<Johny Carson Voice>I did not know that</voice>

But it does make sense.

[appalachian_fox]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_wave

 

I used to live next to the Lamont Doherty Geological site, they had lots of community classes (mostly targetted at geol students) and other such open houses. It's amazing to see all the stuff they can figure out from seismic waves.

[TheBugs]

yay for geology... its part of my major

[Pestilence]

Thats a really cool find, I didn't know that the techtonic plates were that active.

Edited January 29, 2006 by Pestilence