Latest Seismic wave Stories

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online There’s no doubt that last autumn’s superstorm Sandy left a trail of destruction as it churned up the eastern seaboard, making a bulls-eye run at New York City. But a new study from researchers at the University of Utah has found that the storm also shook things up a bit. When Sandy took a left turn for Long Island and NYC, powerful ocean waves began slamming into each other and battered the coastline, sending seismometers up...

National Science Foundation A network of seismographic stations recorded spectacular signals from the blast waves of the meteor that landed near Chelyabinsk, Russia, as the waves crossed the United States. The National Science Foundation- (NSF) supported stations are used to study earthquakes and the Earth's deep interior. While thousands of earthquakes around the globe are recorded by seismometers in these stations--part of the permanent Global Seismographic Network (GSN) and...

University of Utah Partly molten, Florida-sized blob forms atop Earth's core A University of Utah seismologist analyzed seismic waves that bombarded Earth's core, and believes he got a look at the earliest roots of Earth's most cataclysmic kind of volcanic eruption. But don't worry. He says it won't happen for perhaps 200 million years. "What we may be detecting is the start of one of these large eruptive events that – if it ever happens – could cause very massive destruction on...

Sandia National Laboratories You’d think it would be easy to use seismic waves to find tunnels dug by smugglers of drugs, weapons or people. You’d be wrong. Nedra Bonal of Sandia’s geophysics and atmospheric sciences organization is nearing the end of a two-year study, “Improving Shallow Tunnel Detection From Surface Seismic Methods,” aimed at getting a better look at the ground around tunnels and learning why seismic data finds some tunnels but not others. Her eventual...

Technique provides insight into ancient formation of underwater plateau Scientists have long used the speed of seismic waves traveling through the Earth as a means of learning about the geologic structure beneath the Earth's surface, but the seismic waves they use have typically been generated by earthquakes or man-made explosions. A University of Rhode Island graduate student is using the tiny seismic waves created by ocean waves crashing on shorelines around the world to learn how an...

Changes in seismic velocity--changes in the speeds at which seismic waves move through the Earth's crust--have been identified during and after many earthquakes. But do these changes also happen before an earthquake, and could they be measured as a way to predict a quake on the way? The search for a clear and measurable pre-quake signal has been called "the holy grail of seismology." In a new analysis of the 2004 magnitude 6.0 Parkfield earthquake in California, David Schaff suggests some...

The ESA’s GOCE satellite has produced the first global high-resolution map of the boundary between the Earth’s mantle and its crust, according to an ESA press release. Understanding the mantle-or MoHo-could provide us with clues about the Earth’s interior. The Earth’s crust makes up only 1% total volume of our planet and is just the outermost shell. However, this 1% is very important to the overall makeup of the Earth. Geological resources such as oil and minerals are found in...

Seismic responseJapan's March 11 Tohoku Earthquake is among the strongest ever recorded, and because it struck one of the world's most heavily instrumented seismic zones, this natural disaster is providing scientists with a treasure trove of data on rare magnitude 9 earthquakes. Among the new information is what is believed to be the first study of how a shock this powerful affects the rock and soil beneath the surface.Analyzing data from multiple measurement stations, scientists at the...

By studying seismographs from the earthquake that hit Chile last February, earth scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found a statistically significant increase of microearthquakes in central California in the first few hours after the main shock. The observation provides an additional support that seismic waves from distant earthquakes could also trigger seismic events on the other side of the earth. The results may be found online in the journal Geophysical Research...

SeiSpec launches a web site to help track the development and testing of their recently patented seismic acquisition technology. Important in the production and discovery of oil and gas, the SeiSpec process improves underground imaging through improvement of the signal to noise ratio. Georgetown, TX (PRWEB) February 1, 2011 SeiSpec, LLC., a Texas firm organized to further the development of a new approach to seismic acquisition, has opened a website at http://www.seispec.com. The...