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Interesting. I always assumed that the energies involved in major earthquakes were far too large for us to affect them in any way. If we can cause them, I wond
by emiliobumachar 8y ago
Interesting. I always assumed that the energies involved in major earthquakes were far too large for us to affect them in any way.
If we can cause them, I wonder, will we be able to prevent the natural ones as our knowledge increases?
- howiroll 8y agoThey are. Because of the 2011 tohoku earthquake faults near them had received massive force and it caused the earthquake, not some 10,000 tonnes of water they pumped down.
- pmontra 8y agoEarth's crust "wants" to move. One thing is triggering an earthquake by fracking, another one is stopping the crust with all the mantle below pushing heat into it. That heat has to go somewhere. I guess the best we'll reasonably do is forecasting quakes.
- granos 8y agoHypothetically, if you could cause earthquakes in a controlled way, it may be possible to perform periodic small stress relief quakes rather than allowing one big one to occur naturally. We can't stop it moving, but maybe we can make it move on our terms.
- eloff 8y agoExactly, this seems like an interesting avenue to explore.
- pmontra 8y agoI think to remember that wet faults (as in "there is water mixed with the rocks") slide more frequently that dry faults and yield energy in less powerful bursts. If so, lubrificating faults could be a solution. Unfortunately I found a paper from 2017 [1] that suggests that it's not so simple. There are many more micro conditions that can trigger an earthquake. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5580450/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5580450/
- peteradio 8y agoYou only need the energy to pull the trigger of a gun to release the energy of a bullet.