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The Los Angeles area is threaded with many buried faults, some of which have never been mapped. A new study suggests that a magnitude 5.0 or greater earthquake on at least one of these faults is virtually a sure thing in the next few years.
The Los Angeles area is threaded with many buried faults, some of which have never been mapped. A new study suggests that a magnitude 5.0 or greater earthquake on at least one of these faults is virtually a sure thing in the next few years.
The Greater Los Angeles area has a 99.9 percent chance of having an earthquake of magnitude 5.0 or greater in the next two and a half years, thanks to several hidden faults that have built up considerable strain, according to a study published Sept. 30 in the journal Earth and Space Science.
But exactly where this next medium-size temblor could strike is less clear, because any one of the many faults that thread through the area could rupture.
"Identifying specific fault structures most likely to be responsible for future earthquakes for this system of many active faults is often very difficult," Andrea Donnellan, a geologist in the Science Division of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.
Comment: Speaking of its interesting timing, Halloween has interesting mythological origins:
Witches, Comets and Planetary Cataclysms
The fact that this near-Earth asteroid is guess-timated to be 280-620m (919-2,034 ft) in diameter and was discovered less than a month before it passes the Earth should give everyone pause for concern. Even though this particular asteroid isn't on a collision course with Earth, it could still pose a danger. Especially if it brought friends.