|PASADENA, Calif. - Earthquakes are fearful things, often catastrophic, yet largely forgotten in the interim between major jolts. Still, the western United States is earthquake country. How best, then, to withstand, both in human and financial terms, the occurrence in urban areas of large earthquakes that occur over long intervals?
The greatest progress in mitigating the hazards earthquakes pose will come from the deepest possible understanding of why they occur in the first place, says Brian Wernicke, the Chandler Family Professor of Geology at the California Institute of Technology. On Wednesday, May 7, Wernicke will discuss the current state of earthquake research in his talk, "All the Faults in the World; the Cutting Edge of Tectonic Research." It is one of the ongoing Earnest C. Watson Lecture Series that take place on the Caltech campus.
Scientists who study tectonics--how the outer part of the earth deforms--are developing a physical theory that relates phenomena on a human time scale, such as earthquakes, to those observed over long-scale geological time, such as the motions of tectonic plates and the creation of mountain ranges.
This knowledge will help scientists understand what triggers earthquakes, determine what the earthquake potential is in any given area, and allow us to bettter prepare for them.
That's not to suggest, says Wernicke, that we would ever be able to give a day's, week's, or month's notice of an impending earthquake even if we did understand why they occur. But at a minimum we could greatly improve the current century- to millennium-scale estimates of the hazards that exist in any given locality. By analogy, he notes, while tomorrow's weather forecast may be useful (will it rain tomorrow, or not?), our understanding of climate, and changes in climate (how much rain per year on average, and will this hold up for the next century?), are critical. When we build our houses, insure our property, decide what to plant, and buy our clothes, we do so out of knowledge of climate more than out of knowledge of tomorrow's weather. For earthquakes, as weather, the long-range perspective is perhaps more useful from the standpoint of how to withstand the power of large temblors over long stretches of time.
Achieving this goal lies in understanding a broad range of phenomena, which are just now coming to light, that occur at timescales of decades to hundreds of thousands of years. This is made possible thanks to diverse new technologies that Wernicke will discuss, such as satellite positioning (GPS) and landscape imaging, measurement of rare isotopes in rocks created by cosmic rays, and high-performance computing and data engineering.
For over 81 years Caltech has offered the Watson Lecture Series, ever since it was conceived by the late Caltech physicist Earnest Watson as a way to explain science to the local community. The lecture will take place at 8 p.m. in Beckman Auditorium, which is located near Michigan Avenue south of Del Mar Boulevard, on Caltech's campus in Pasadena. Seating is available on a free, no-ticket-required, first-come, first-served basis, beginning at 7:30 p.m. Parking is available in the lots south of Del Mar Boulevard between Wilson and Chester avenues, and in the parking structures at 341 and 405 South Wilson and 370 South Holliston Avenue.
For more information, call 1(888) 2CALTECH (1-888-222-5832) or (626)-395-4652. Persons with disabilities: (626)-395-4688 (voice) or (626)-395-3700 (TDD).