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Trillions of gallons of rain have already fallen on the state of California, and more rain continues to fall as I write this article. Billions of dollars in damage has already been done, but of even greater concern is what all of this water could mean for southern California’s fault lines. As you will see below, geophysicists have discovered that the additional weight that flooding puts on fault lines can help trigger earthquakes. Of course we have been warned for many years that “the Big One” is way overdue in southern California, and when it finally happens it will be...

The "Serendipity Sapphire" weighs 2.5 million carats. A massive sapphire cluster worth as much as $100 million has been unearthed by workers digging a well in the backyard of a Sri Lankan home, authorities said. “The person who was digging the well alerted us about some rare stones. Later we stumbled upon this huge specimen,” the owner, who only wanted to be identified by his last name Gamage, told the outlet. “I have never seen such a large specimen before. This was probably formed around 400 million years ago,” Dr. Gamini Zoysa, a top gemmologist, told the BBC. “Given the...

A team of scientists is reportedly working to obtain the sharpest pictures ever taken of the Cascadia subduction zone – a fault line that runs for seven hundred miles off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. The subduction zone, which has been the site of some of North America's largest earthquakes and the Earth's past "megathrust" earthquakes, has been strangely quiet, with almost no seismic activity detected. To investigate Cascadia's Oregon and British Columbia portion and the reason for this lull, Columbia University led a team of researchers – including students – from the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics,...

For a second day, shaking has rattled areas in Northern California. The United States Geological Survey reported a 4.8-magnitude quake rocked areas near Salinas and Hollister, west of Fresno County just before 1 p.m. Tuesday. The earthquake comes after an overnight of shaking set off by two quakes Monday night...

The good news about Thursday's 6.4-magnitude quake... is that it happened in an unpopulated area of the Mojave Desert about 100 miles from the main San Andreas fault. The bad news? "The probability of a 'big one' hasn't changed at all," ... "You realize the last big earthquake to hit the L.A. segment of the San Andreas fault was 1680. That's over 300 years ago. But the cycle time for breaks and earthquakes on the San Andreas fault is 130 years, so we are way overdue. In any given year, the probability of the big one is 3% in any...

Big one

As military helicopters ferry search and rescue teams over the Pacific Northwest, below them are scenes of devastation from a giant earthquake that could strike the region at any time. Tsunami waters surge through coastal communities. Buildings, bridges and roads lie in ruins. Fires burn out of control. Survivors are stranded on rooftops, cling to floating debris or are trapped inside wrecked buildings. Seismologists say a full rupture of a 650-mile-long offshore fault running from Northern California to British Columbia and an ensuing tsunami could come in our lifetime, and emergency management officials are busy preparing for the worst. Federal,...

Downtown Los Angeles boasts some big-city perks like spacious lofts and trendy restaurants, but living there is a different kind of beast. By Mike Armstrong July 17, 2011 "Look, Daddy, that man's going to the bathroom!" No, not the words any daddy wants to hear from his 10-year-old daughter, especially during a stroll through their brand-new neighborhood. Moving my wife and kids into a downtown Los Angeles loft may not win me "Dumbest Dad of the Year" honors, but it should at least get me into the quarterfinals. The loft itself was great. More like a movie set than an...

The 340-mile, southern section of the San Andreas fault could slip at anytime, triggering a massive, magnitude 8.1 quake, researchers announced Sunday. A report in the August issue of Geology by researchers at UC Irvine and Arizona State University suggest the fault is long overdue for a major quake — running from Monterey County to the Salton Sea, the Los Angeles Times reported. The last major rupture on the San Andreas was in 1857. Until recently, experts believed that the section of the fault through the Carrizo Plain, located approximately 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles, would remain dormant for...

As UC Davis physicist and geologist John Rundle ponders the map of recent California earthquakes, he sees visions of a doughnut even Homer J. Simpson wouldn't like. The doughnut is formed by pinpointing the recent quakes near Eureka, Mexicali and Palm Springs. Seismologists call the possible pattern a Mogi doughnut. It's the outgrowth of a concept, developed in Japan, which holds that earthquakes sometimes occur in a circular pattern over decades —building up to one very large quake in the doughnut hole. Rundle and his colleagues believe that the recent quakes, combined with larger seismic events including the 1989 Loma...

"Whenever we have a little earthquake or something happens, it always reminds us to remind our citizens - are you prepared?" ... Smith said the city's No. 1 priority is the safety of its citizens. He urged residents to consider "what if" scenarios in order to prepare for a disaster. ... "I'll tell you what: When you're thinking about those three things when the building starts to shake, it's too late. Because if you're not prepared before then, you won't be prepared for the catastrophe that you may be facing," he said. Metro said dealing with a catastrophic event has...

Calif. quake scientists detail impact of 'Big One' By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science WriterMay 21, 2008 In this Jan. 17, 1994, file photo, the covered body of Los Angeles motorcycle officer Clarence W. Dean lays near his motorcycle which plunged off Highway 14 overpass that collapsed onto Interstate 5 in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles. In a joint publication, to be released Thursday, May 22, 2008, of the U.S. Geological Survey and California Geological Survey, scientists for the first time have written a script detailing the devastation California would likely face if it were rocked by a...

Source: University of Oxford Date: August 21, 2007 San Andreas Fault Likely Much More Destructive Than Current Models Predict Science Daily — High-speed ruptures travelling along straight fault lines could explain why some earthquakes are more destructive than others, according to an Oxford University scientist. In this week’s Science, Professor Shamita Das suggests that ruptures in the Earth’s surface moving at 6km per second could make future earthquakes along California’s San Andreas fault much more destructive than current models predict. A box canyon on the San Andreas fault: High speed ruptures travelling along the straight section of the fault could...

It'll be bad. Hurricane Katrina bad. Likely worse. Thousands dead. Buildings collapsed. Freeways severed. Scientists for the first time are figuring out in great detail just how bad it will be when the southern section of the San Andreas Fault, roughly between Palmdale and the Salton Sea, cuts loose. "One of our goals is not to say, `We're all gonna die,"' said Lucy Jones of the California Institute of Technology, who is leading the effort. "It's, `Here's how you're going to die if you don't change anything."' Scientists, academics, utility companies and emergency planners have jumped aboard the project so...

The idea of a great quake occurring along the San Andreas Fault that runs through the Antelope Valley is not a question of if, but rather, of when. Red Cross emergency preparation expert Bob Wood related ... expect a fissure about 30 feet across and an earth slippage that rises up a dozen or so feet.The last big area quake, he said, was in 1857, and the San Andreas has been pretty steady at making a major movement around every 140-year interval through historic geologic time. Instead, he advised, make preparations for smaller-scale catastrophes. Civil unrest, for example. Or big...

PALM SPRINGS - The San Andreas fault may be on the cusp of producing larger and more frequent earthquakes in a flurry of seismic activity that could rattle Southern California with a strong temblor every few decades or less, a geologist said Wednesday. A detailed analysis of two periods of past quake activity on a section of California's most notorious fault suggests a drawn-out period of little seismic activity may be coming to an end, said Ray Weldon, a University of Oregon geologist. "Possibly we are at the point of switching from a period of time with a relative paucity...

The London based Al Hayat daily reported Thursday that United States forces may have captured Osama Bin Laden.The newspaper quoted Pakastani military sources as saying Osama Bin Laden could have been one of the Al Qaeda leaders siezed by the United States.