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No, we're not referring to Starbuck and Apollo getting it on on Battlestar Galactica — but rather, "fracking" is a technique of drilling for natural gas. And it can cause even bigger disruptions than an ill-judged hookup between two Colonial pilots. More »
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Last month's earthquake in Virginia rattled the 555-foot-tall Washington Monument such that it's been closed indefinitely so engineers can assess damage. Buildings all across the Eastern Seaboard were rocked on August 23, but the Monument's security camera footage shows that people visiting the famous obelisk had a particularly harrowing experience. More »
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According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the small town of Mineral, Virginia was was the epicenter of a 5.9 magnitude earthquake earlier this afternoon, making today's quake at least equal in intensity to Virginia's largest earthquake on record, which the USGS says occurred in Giles County, Virginia in 1897. More »
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I don't know if any of you on the East Coast of the United States felt that earlier this afternoon (I felt it here in New York City), but according to the United States Geological Survey, a 5.9-magnitude earthquake just hit Mineral, Virginia, a town 100 miles south of Washington DC, shortly before 2:00 PM EST. More »
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For those of you with a penchant for plate tectonics, there are plenty of places on Twitter to follow our planet's earthquakes as they happen. More »
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It may not be Lex Luthor's earthquake-causing missile, but the earthquake centrifuge at UC Davis in California is the next best thing. It's a giant robotic arm that can cause horrific earthquakes, all in the name of science. More »
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Here's a novel explanation for California's earthquakes: Blame the sun and the moon. According to researchers at UC Berkeley, their combined gravity is just enough to set the San Andreas Fault in motion. More »
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This terrifying, glorious creature is an Earthquake Dragon, whose body is connected to the fabric of the earth that he destroys. And he's just one of dozens in this collection of concept designs created on the theme of Earthquake Dragons. More »
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Tremors are increasing near a "locked" stretch of the San Andreas fault in Central California near Parkfield. In a study released today, seismologists say this could mean the shaky state is on the verge of an enormous quake. More »
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It sounds like voodoo, but NASA researcher Friedemann Freund is so convinced he's discovered the secret to predicting earthquakes that he's put up $1 million dollars of his own money to fly a group of satellites into Earth orbit to test his theory. The instruments could be up in as little as two years, looking for small electrical charges that build up as rocks in the planet's crust get strained by the massive forces of plate tectonics. Of course there are a lot of dissenters to Freund's theory, but according to an internal memo leaked to the press in May, other NASA scientists are planning to tell the world later this summer that the idea works. More »
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The Quake Catcher Network is the latest effort in distributed computing that aims to turn your computer into a node in a vast, distributed earthquake detection network. Developed by University of California seismologists and computer scientists, Quake Catcher uses accelerometers already built into many laptops to detect shaking. If several nodes produce consistent hits at once, the word goes out across the internet in real time: Earthquake in Progress. Once there are enough nodes in active fault zones, the researchers think they can pick up seismic waves on the Network and transmit a warning to populated areas with somewhere between 10 and 20 seconds of warning. After the break, we take a look at three of the most dangerous places on Earth that are most likely to need Quake Catcher. More »
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Mount St Helens, a volcano long believed to be dormant in Washington State in the U.S., freaked people out back in 1980 when it suddenly erupted and spewed tons of lava and boiling mud into the air (as you can see in this picture). It calmed down for a few years, but in 2004 it started slowly erupting, and has been oozing sticky clumps of lava continuously since then. As it erupts, it also unleashes constant small earthquakes in the areas nearby. Now a Michigan Tech researcher has braved the lava-slicked slopes of Mount St Helens do do some of the most detailed seismic research on the volcano ever. And he thinks he knows what's causing all the shakes. More »
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