[californiadisasters] Bogus Claim: Japan Earthquake Won't Trigger a California Quake

Bogus Claim: Japan Earthquake Won't Trigger a California Quake

LiveScience.com livescience.com – Mon Mar 21, 7:15 pm ET

An unfounded scientific assertion by a nonscientist has swept across the Web like a tsunami over the past few days. In an article in Newsweek, writer Simon Winchester claimed that the 9.0-magnitude Japan earthquake, following close on the heels of recent quakes in New Zealand and Chile, has ratcheted up the chances of a catastrophic seismic event striking in California.

In his article, "The Scariest Earthquake Is Yet to Come," Winchester pointed out that all three of those recent earthquakes occurred along faults on the edge of the Pacific Plate — the giant tectonic puzzle piece under the Pacific Ocean — and that this also butts up against the North American plate along the San Andreas Fault.

"[A] significant event on one side of a major tectonic plate is often … followed some weeks or months later by another on the plate's far side," he wrote. "Now there have been catastrophic events at three corners of the Pacific Plate — one in the northwest, on Friday; one in the southwest, last month; one in the southeast, last year. That leaves just one corner unaffected — the northeast. And the fault line in the northeast of the Pacific Plate is the San Andreas Fault, underpinning the city of San Francisco."

Winchester claimed that the geological community is "very apprehensive" about these earthquakes triggering a massive California quake. Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience, checked that claim with a panel of geophysicists.

"There is no evidence for a connection between all of the Pacific Rim earthquakes," Nathan Bangs, a geophysicist who studies tectonic processes at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, told Life's Little Mysteries. "I don't know what the basis is for the statements and implications in the Newsweek article, but there is no evidence that there is a link."

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) earthquake geologist David Schwartz, who heads the San Francisco Bay Area Earthquake Hazards Project, concurred. "Simon Winchester is a popular science writer, not a scientist," Schwartz said. "I'm not saying we won't have an earthquake here in California at some point in the future, but there really is no physical connection between these earthquakes."

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View entire article here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110321/sc_livescience/bogusclaimjapanearthquakewonttriggeracaliforniaquake

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