Word: leet
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Lewis Don Leet, crack Harvard seismologist, does not want to be an alarmist -but he does his duty when he sees it. In the closing days of 1940, two earthquakes shook solid old New England, which is far outside the zone of major quakes (TIME, Jan. 6). Property damage was small and casualties practically nil; in Peru, Japan or California, the shocks would have been dismissed as trivial. Last week Dr. Leet said they might augur worse shocks to come...
...good many seismologists believe that quakes in northeastern North America, whose rocks are old and relatively stable, are caused by an intermittent, jerky rising of the earth crust released from the great weight of the last Glacial Age. Dr. Leet dissents from this view, at least to the extent of pigeonholing it as a guess. In the Harvard Alumni Bulletin last week, he declared that deep forces are at work under New England and eastern Canada-moreover that the region is in a period of "increasing seismicity." He notes that relatively strong shocks were felt...
...Leet says flatly that earthquakes cannot be predicted. But he thinks there is a definite possibility that, sometime in the next half century, a really lethal quake may hit Portland, Boston, Worcester, Springfield, Hartford, Bridgeport, Providence or New York. To minimize the hazard, he advised those cities to start earthquake protection for buildings and utilities...
...Leet, assistant professor of Seismology, has measured velocities of 5.2 miles per second for "push" waves, a form imparting back and forward motion, which were travelling in the msterious upper mantle layer 21 miles below the surface of the earth. This is 1,440 miles per hour faster than any velocities yet recorded for this layer, and cannot be explained in terms of any familiar geological material or present theories about conditions of heat and pressure in the upper mantle layer...
...basis of a survey conducted for ten years during which every type of dynamite was used and every phase of close distance explosion was guaged, Leet has presented his material to the U.S. army authorities, who are now conducting further research upon...