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"A major California fault capable of producing a magnitude 8 earthquake has begun moving for the first time on record, a result of this year’s Ridgecrest earthq

• jnty 7y ago
  No - because it doesn't give any context about what the consequences of that might be. The next paragraph could say something like "this is perfectly normal, though, and is very unlikely to lead to an earthquake" or "this means an earthquake is nearly inevitable in the next month" and I'd be no more surprised by one that the other.
• jchw 7y ago
  Not really, because the article goes on with this quote: >“We don’t know what it means.” Then... >Whether the destabilization will result in a major quake soon cannot be predicted. In September, the U.S. Geological Survey said the most likely scenario is that the Ridgecrest quakes probably won’t trigger a larger earthquake. And of course... >Also, a creeping fault triggered by a nearby quake doesn’t necessarily mean a big quake is coming. The southernmost tip of the San Andreas fault has traditionally crept in response to distant quakes, including the magnitude 8.2 quake off the coast of southern Mexico in 2017, nearly 2,000 miles away. “But that doesn’t mean the San Andreas went off,” said USGS research geologist Kate Scharer, who was not part of the study. They do their best to not link to the actual study for which the alarmist headline seems to be derived. It is probably this: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6463/346 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6463/346 What I'm really wondering is whether the '8.0' figure is present in this paper or not. Because otherwise, where did they pull that number?