It is well known that, off the coast of Vancouver Island, the massive undersea Juan de Fuca tectonic plate is slowly sliding under the larger North American plate, putting the west coast of Canada at grave risk of a megathrust earthquake and resulting tsunami.
What is lesser known about this process is the massive amount of energy that is unaccounted for, and might be building silently toward catastrophe. Newly published research based on artificial intelligence claims to have found it in a constant, low, background tremor, and, with it, a new way of predicting when the next big one might hit.
There has not been a major earthquake in what is known as the Cascadia subduction zone since about 9 p.m. on Jan. 26, 1700, long before Europeans first landed on Vancouver Island. The event is moderately well known to historians, however, for two reasons.
No comments:
Post a Comment