Scientists are creating tiny man-made earthquakes with the hopes of predicting real, big quakes.
The research is designed to look into the phenomena of earthquake triggering — the idea that quakes cause other quakes, and scientists are creating the tiny quakes to prove it.
The tiny faultlines are too small for the naked eye, but the modeling could explain if quakes can trigger other quakes halfway around the world.
Paul Johnson is one of the scientists at the Los Alamos National Labs that are conducting the research.
His partner scientist created what they call an "earthquake machine," where two semirigid plastic plates slide against each other, and sound is used to create the mini-temblors.
"We pulsed the sound waves through the air and triggered an earthquake," Johnson said.
He believes the last 15 major quakes since 2000 are related, and his research is trying to understand how these quakes change the physical properties of the Earth’s crust and how these changes can lead to triggering other quakes.
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His team has discovered that all the great quakes 7.5 or higher since 1900 did not occur randomly.
They believe they are temporally clustered in two distinct time periods — mid-20th century and right now.
The team admits their data sample size is small and statistics are weak because quake data only goes back 100 years, but that’s why the man-made tiny quakes are important.
If the research holds up, researchers may have to re-examine how we look at plate tectonics, but also possibly be able to predict when the big one might hit.
