Word: benioff
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Earthquakes seem to happen at random; they seldom give advance warning, and cannot be predicted with any certainty. Last week Professor Hugo Benioff of CalTech explained his theory that all great shallow earthquakes (originating in rock slippage less-than 45 miles below the surface) have a common cause and are released by a single "mechanism...
Geophysicists have long thought that earthquakes are caused by a sudden release of strain (distortion) in the earth's crust. Dr. Benioff studied the records of all major earthquakes since 1904 and made a chart of their "strain-rebound" characteristics. Somewhat to his surprise, the chart made a regular, sawtooth pattern, with the teeth getting smaller and lower as the diagram approached...
Such regularity in a chart usually means that an overall law is operating. Dr. Benioff studied more records, made more charts, and found evidence that the earth generates earthquake-producing strain at a constant rate. When the strain is not released in earthquakes, it accumulates at crustal weak points until something has to give. Then comes a series of earthquakes, followed by a period of quiet until more strain has accumulated...
...gadget, called an electro-cello, was the latest of scientists' attempts to improve on the aged wood and fine Italian hand of the old violin makers. It was fashioned by Caltech's seismologist Dr. Hugo Benioff, who gave up violin playing as a boy because he couldn't stand the noise he made. Eighteen years ago, when he was designing seismographs to measure earthquakes, he decided that there wasn't much difference between a seismograph and a fiddle "except one deals with slow movements and the other with rapid movements." For his scientific cello he mounted...
...Benioff Seismographs, most sensitive of any, at the station on Oak Ridge, Harvard, Mass., have been used by Dr. Lect to study the New England upper crust in collaberation with the Dominican Observatory, Ottawa, Williams College, Weston College, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. By measurements of quake waves of both the "Push" and "Throb" variety, Dr. Lect has determined that the New England top layer consists of nine miles of hard granite...