Word: bigs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...next two to three years, we will have the next set of innovations, which will make them abandon their projections. It has happened before, and it will happen again." Don Valentine, a partner in Sequoia Capital, a venture-capital firm, contends that creative stagnation is confined mostly to the big corporations, including IBM, Wang and Unisys. Says he: "There is no innovation at the dinosaur companies that are run by Neanderthals. Perhaps they have outlived their function...
...mountains some 50 miles away. The spot was no surprise: it lay on the San Andreas fault, a great gash in the earth that extends nearly the length of the California coast. Even before the quake, the Santa Cruz area had been identified as a prime candidate for a big tremor. "We still can't predict when an earthquake will occur," says geologist Clarence Allen of the California Institute of Technology, "but at least we can say where an earthquake is most likely...
From the start, scientists had a firm answer to the question uppermost in every Californian's mind: the earthquake that hit San Francisco last week was not the long-feared Big One. While it packed a punch, measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale,* the 1906 earthquake was 25 times as strong, at 8.3. Warns Dallas Peck, director of the U.S. Geological Survey: "The question is not whether a bigger earthquake is coming. The question is when...
...this movement of the plates is not uniform. Along fault zones the plates tend to become "locked," resisting the overall motion. Explains Berkeley seismologist Robert Uhrhammer: "Stress builds up in these areas that are in effect welded shut. It's as if the rock were being stretched like a big rubber sheet." At a certain point the rock snaps, allowing the plates to slip and release stress. The result is an earthquake...
Even though the mechanics of earthquakes are understood, accurate prediction of their occurrence has remained beyond reach. Earthquake forecasting is mostly based on past history. If a fault once generated a big earthquake, it can be assumed that it will do so again. But just where and when will the next big break occur? Here scientists are beginning to make headway. Geophysicist Wayne Thatcher of the USGS notes that the 1906 quake ruptured a 260-mile-long section of the San Andreas, extending from Cape Mendocino to San Juan Bautista. But the plate movement along the southern portion...