El and Bill
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A few hours ago there was another earthquake in the Caribbean region - this one a 5.8 Richter in the Cayman Islands region. Don't know of any reported effects yet, since my info comes from geologists who are only reporting quakes.
This one is particularly interesting to me since it is located along the same plate boundary as the big one a week ago in Haiti. Are they associated?
Geologists studying quakes have been considering what we call "binary quakes" for some years. These are quakes that are possibly 'triggered' by an earthquake elsewhere. They are not necessarily along the same fault line (although, most likely they are, since energy released in one segment of a fault line might 'store' energy 'down the line' along the fault). In other words, a slippage here might move the rocks along the fault and build up a potential slippage farther down the fracture (or the movement on the fault might remove a barrier for slippage 'behind' the quake epicenter). This might be the case with this quake this morning in the Cayman Islands, to the west of the Haiti epicenter.
The slippage of the second quake of the 'binary' could be seconds, days, or months later.
Or, a binary could result from a quake, shaking rocks in the crust, that might 'trigger' another quake near or distant simply by the passage of the waves through the crust releasing energy already 'pent up' elsewhere.
Years ago, I worked with such studies. An underground nuclear detonation was set off outside the Nevada Test Site - near an active fault zone - to see if the shock would trigger a 'natural' quake there or elsewhere. There were other reasons for the shot as well, perhaps still classified. Anyway, a 'binary' did result from the shot.
In the past several years, seismologists have been intensely studying 'binaries' using statistical analyses (among other techniques) so today's quake in the Cayman's I'm sure will be closely studied - I'll report to you, for those interested, what I read in the geological literature as it is published.
This one is particularly interesting to me since it is located along the same plate boundary as the big one a week ago in Haiti. Are they associated?
Geologists studying quakes have been considering what we call "binary quakes" for some years. These are quakes that are possibly 'triggered' by an earthquake elsewhere. They are not necessarily along the same fault line (although, most likely they are, since energy released in one segment of a fault line might 'store' energy 'down the line' along the fault). In other words, a slippage here might move the rocks along the fault and build up a potential slippage farther down the fracture (or the movement on the fault might remove a barrier for slippage 'behind' the quake epicenter). This might be the case with this quake this morning in the Cayman Islands, to the west of the Haiti epicenter.
The slippage of the second quake of the 'binary' could be seconds, days, or months later.
Or, a binary could result from a quake, shaking rocks in the crust, that might 'trigger' another quake near or distant simply by the passage of the waves through the crust releasing energy already 'pent up' elsewhere.
Years ago, I worked with such studies. An underground nuclear detonation was set off outside the Nevada Test Site - near an active fault zone - to see if the shock would trigger a 'natural' quake there or elsewhere. There were other reasons for the shot as well, perhaps still classified. Anyway, a 'binary' did result from the shot.
In the past several years, seismologists have been intensely studying 'binaries' using statistical analyses (among other techniques) so today's quake in the Cayman's I'm sure will be closely studied - I'll report to you, for those interested, what I read in the geological literature as it is published.