Latest San Francisco earthquake Stories

University of California - Berkeley The more time it takes for an earthquake fault to heal, the faster the shake it will produce when it finally ruptures, according to a new study by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, who conducted their work using a tabletop model of a quake fault. "The high frequency waves of an earthquake — the kind that produces the rapid jolts — are not well understood because they are more difficult to measure and more difficult to model,"...

New dynamic computer model first to show full history of a fault segment For those who study earthquakes, one major challenge has been trying to understand all the physics of a fault—both during an earthquake and at times of "rest"—in order to know more about how a particular region may behave in the future. Now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed the first computer model of an earthquake-producing fault segment that reproduces, in a single...

Please cite the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA) as the source of these papers. BSSA is published by the Seismological Society of America. 2010 Haiti quake possible start of new cycle of seismic activity, according to new study. The January 2010 quake that destroyed much of Port-au-Prince may have marked the start of a new cycle of active seismicity, putting Haiti and the Dominican Republic at high risk of future devastating earthquakes. The island of...

Geoelectrrical analysis and the change between creep and quakes in the San Andreas fault Geophysicists from Potsdam have established a mode of action that can explain the irregular distribution of strong earthquakes at the San Andreas Fault in California. As the science magazine Nature reports in its latest issue, the scientists examined the electrical conductivity of the rocks at great depths, which is closely related to the water content within the rocks. From the pattern of electrical...

SAN FRANCISCO, July 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Once you have penguins in your pocket, you'll wonder how you ever got along without them. Pocket Penguins, a new app designed and developed by the California Academy of Sciences, offers users live views of the museum's colony of charismatic African Penguins 24 hours a day. Users can toggle between three different cameras in the exhibit, including an underwater vantage point, and watch for some of the birds' most endearing behaviors, including...

Study finds that faults beneath the Salton Sea ruptured during Colorado River floods and may have triggered large earthquakes on the southern San Andreas FaultSouthern California's Salton Sea, once a large natural lake fed by the Colorado River, may play an important role in the earthquake cycle of the southern San Andreas Fault and may have triggered large earthquakes in the past.Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the...

Lake status doesn't affect earthquake timing, but a big quake for Los Angeles Basin remains on the tableA chronology of 1,000 years of earthquakes at the southern end of the San Andreas Fault nixes the idea that lake changes in the now-dry region caused past quakes. However, researchers say, the timeline pulled from sediment in three deep trenches confirms that this portion of the fault is long past the expected time for a major temblor that would strongly shake the Los Angeles Basin.The new...

In a US study, researchers said that strong earthquakes recorded along the San Andreas fault in southern California are more frequent than previously believed, and they fear the "Big One" could be just around the corner.Scientists at the University of California at Irvine and Arizona State University examined geological records stretching back 700 years along the fault line about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles.They found that strong earthquakes -- 6.5 to 7.9 magnitude -- occurred every 45...

In response to the disaster in Haiti on Jan. 12, NASA has added a series of science overflights of earthquake faults in Haiti and the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola to a previously scheduled three-week airborne radar campaign to Central America.NASA's Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar, or UAVSAR, left NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., on Jan. 25 aboard a modified NASA Gulfstream III aircraft.During its trek to Central America, which...

Stream channel offsets features linked to large earthquakesRecent studies of stream channel offsets along the San Andreas Fault reveal new information about fault behavior--changing our understanding of the potential for damaging earthquakes.The studies were conducted at the Carrizo Plain, 100 miles north of Los Angeles and site of the original "Big One"--the Fort Tejon quake of 1857--by scientists at Arizona State University (ASU) and the University of California at Irvine...