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Re: [Phys-l] Earthquakes in Baja



On 02/20/2008 08:00 AM, Marc "Zeke" Kossover wrote:

Over the last couple of weeks, there have been a number of medium
sized earthquakes in Baja California.
<http://quake.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Quakes/quakes.big.htm> Does anyone
know if a series of medium sized quakes increases the chances of a
major earthquake? Are they predictive of anything?

It depends on details. You need to look at the details to tell
what is foreshock/mainshock/aftershock.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006AGUFM.S24A..01P

Also: Given a strain field:
-- Small slips aligned in one direction will relieve strain.
-- Small slips aligned in the other direction will /concentrate/
the strain on the remaining sticking-points.


Also: The Richter scale is logarithmic, with a rather large base,
namely sqrt(1000) or about 31.6, so by conservation of energy it
would take a magnitude-5 earthquake every day for 86 years to
relieve the strain of one magnitude-8 earthquake.
http://ww2.nwic.edu/tenrm/spring2001/Richter.htm