Could San Andreas Be Next?

[Atheist-Lite]

Just thinking.....the long waves underground can travel through the mantle and set off other big quakes thousands of kms away.....san andreas?

[Gallstones]

I don't think so.

[FBM]

Pacific plate involved in both, if I understood correctly. Don't know of any way to tell whether the Japan quake increased or decreased the pressure at San Andreas. Or had no influence at all.

Nothing to do but , I guess.

[JimC]

If it were the long waves, it would have been triggered some time ago...

[Thinking Aloud]

Japan is sat atop a subduction zone, where the some of the oldest Pacific plate is dipping down under the Okhotsk plate. The San Andreas is a different type of boundary - slightly unusual in that the "spreading centre" of the Pacific ocean plate is kind of riding under the North American continental plate. Because of the way these spreading centres lie on the globe, we end up with areas that slide against each other, and the effect of this is that one part of California is moving against the other.

Picture 9.jpg

(Spreading centres are visible top and bottom in the middle of the red zones (youngest ocean floor) - it's already gone under CA so one side is sort of carrying western CA further west - orange line is roughly the San Andreas fault. Yellow and orange dots are recent earthquakes.)

Here are the recent quakes in Japan and the subducting margin.

Picture 10.jpg

[Deep Sea Isopod]

I watched a program once, where scientists showed how one earthquake sets off a chain reaction along the fault.
New Zealand has already been hit.... it's moving around.

[Thinking Aloud]

I watched a program once, where scientists showed how one earthquake sets off a chain reaction along the fault.
New Zealand has already been hit.... it's moving around.

But it's not the same fault.

[Deep Sea Isopod]

I watched a program once, where scientists showed how one earthquake sets off a chain reaction along the fault.
New Zealand has already been hit.... it's moving around.

But it's not the same fault.

So who's fault is it?

It's part of the same ring of fire though?

[Thinking Aloud]

I watched a program once, where scientists showed how one earthquake sets off a chain reaction along the fault.
New Zealand has already been hit.... it's moving around.

But it's not the same fault.

So who's fault is it?

It's part of the same ring of fire though?

Both countries are on the western margin of the Pacific plate, which is bounded on all sides by a series of different margin types, and many many areas of faulting.

If the quakes were propagating along the plate boundary, I'd expect to see a few in between too. Yellow, orange and red dots are quakes in the last week.

Picture 11.jpg

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Still waiting for Mt. Wilshire to erupt.

[FBM]

Still waiting for Mt. Wilshire to erupt.

Whose fault is that?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Still waiting for Mt. Wilshire to erupt.

Whose fault is that?

Bloods.

Crips.

Bloods.

Crips.

Bloods.

Crips.

[Atheist-Lite]

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[Thinking Aloud]

There's a thread for that elsewhere...