About 90 % of the earthquake energy does not do what you think it is

Earthquakes can be fatal and catastrophic. But what we feel is a small piece of destroyed energy of the earthquake, according to a new experience.

In a conversation AGU applied Paper, researchers describe how they created a “laboratory earthquake”, or mini versions of natural earthquakes created in a censorship laboratory. This allowed the team to extract a full -awidth, “simplified”, “simplified” earthquake budget, as they mentioned in the paper.

Surprisingly, they found that only about 10 % of the earthquake energy causes the physical shake that most people connect to earthquakes. In general, between 68 and 98 % of energy goes to heat generation around the epicenter. Less than 1 % of this energy is used to disassemble rocks and create new surfaces.

“Our experiences offer an integrated approach that provides one of the most complete views of the earthquake -similar physics in rocks so far,” said Matěj PEč, a co -author of the study and geophysical scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said, said. News of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “This will provide evidence of how to improve current earthquake models and mitigate natural risks.”

Artificial disaster

For the experiment, the team used granite samples to imitate the earthquake layer, which is a section of the Earth’s crust where earthquake usually arises. The goal was to simulate microphic processes during the earthquake that causes rock layers to slip along the rift area, according to the paper.

It wears granite in a soft powder and mixes it with magnetic molecules, with particles as a temperature mark for researchers. Next, they put the sample under the steady pressure conditions that were frequently repeated before the natural Earthquake conditions.

Of the changes in the physical characteristics of mini -earthquake layers, researchers have identified energy dynamics for each laboratory earthquake. They also found that the energy budget changed according to the date of the distortion of the region, or “what the rock is mainly remembered,” explained by Daniel Ortega Aroyo, the main author of the study and a student of graduate studies, for MIT News.

He added: “This date affects many of the properties of materials in the rock, and to some extent dictate how it will slip.”

Expanding reality

The team believes that laboratory earthquake physics is closely reflected in real earthquakes. The real world is certainly more complicated, but the experience is sufficiently distinguished by the basic physical processes of playing during seismic earthquakes, as they claimed.

The researchers said that the results show an applicable method to overcome “spatial and temporal restrictions of current seismic tools and geological notes.” At least, the study can help inform the physical model of earthquake dynamics or the efforts of seismologists to choose the areas most vulnerable to earthquakes.

“We can never reproduce the complexity of the Earth, so we have to isolate physics what is happening in these laboratory earthquakes,” said Piece. “We hope to understand these operations and try to extract them with nature.”