Word: seismologists
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...head of the department of engineering and public policy at Carnegie-Mellon University. But after last week, earthquakes are going to be viewed as a much more persistent risk than they were before. That will force many communities to choose which risks to take seriously. Says Bruce Bolt, a seismologist at the University of California, Berkeley: "If you have only a certain amount of dollars to spend on risk mitigation in a particular area, do you spend it on seismic upgrading or on asbestos removal...
During the 1906 tremor, the plates on either side of the San Andreas lurched past each other by as much as 20 ft. Over time, such jumps add up. "In 30 million years," Berkeley seismologist Bruce Bolt says, "Los Angeles will become a new suburb of San Francisco...
...Andreas fault system divides the Pacific plate and the North American plate, which grind past each other at the pace of 2 in. a year. But 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...
...spaced further apart than small ones, since it takes a much longer time to accumulate sufficient stress. While scientists cannot say exactly where or when the next Big One will hit, they are not without hunches. Southern California, which has not had a Big One since 1857, is every seismologist's first...
...unprecedented arrangement will allow U.S. seismologists to place three monitoring stations within 100 miles of Semipalatinsk, 1,800 miles from Moscow in eastern Kazakhstan, and Soviet scientists to erect their sensors near Yucca Flats, Nev., where U.S. universities have monitored underground tests for years. (Atmospheric tests were halted in 1963 after the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty.) The U.S. team, led by University of Colorado Seismologist Charles Archambeau, will place digital seismometers in three 300-ft.-deep holes drilled by the Soviets. A two-man team will remain near Semipalatinsk to monitor the findings...