Word: seismologist
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...seismologist Charles Richter develops a scale for measuring the strength of earthquakes...
Ekstrom, a seismologist in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said he is very excited about his tenure and happy that he will continue his earthquake research at Harvard...
...intervals between eruptions along the big faults are measured in centuries, whereas the secondary cracks ``may only slip in a big earthquake every 1,000 to 5,000 years,'' notes seismologist Wayne Thatcher of the U.S. Geological Survey. ``Yet there are so damn many of them that they pose a seismic hazard equivalent to the Big One we've all been so focused on.'' Seismologists also point out that quakes could endanger places where citizens have rarely thought about them: Seattle, for instance, which sits close to a fault under the Pacific that seismologists now conclude has triggered major quakes...
...seconds--higher-magnitude quakes typically shudder for 60 seconds or more--through the Elysian Park fault under downtown Los Angeles? ``The only way to get a full picture of how buildings react in an earthquake is to have one,'' says Thomas Heaton, a Geological Survey seismologist. But computer simulations undertaken by Heaton and collaborators show that steel- frame high-rises could have their feet kicked out from under them, and low buildings sitting on spongy pads could be smashed against their concrete foundation walls...
What scientists fear is that the southern San Andreas has reached a similarly critical threshold. "If the Landers earthquake put a little stress on the San Andreas," exclaims Allan Lindh, chief seismologist of the U.S. Geological Survey, "then what about the accumulated stress of 300 years of plate motion?" For Lindh and other experts, the Landers quake and its resulting tremors are all too reminiscent of the increased seismic activity that preceded the great San Francisco blowout of 1906. "I mean," says Lindh, with a dramatic pause, "how much more on the edge of our chairs...