seismographs

A team of seismologists from Washington University in St. Louis, like members of the starship Enterprise, will “boldly go where no man has gone before” after Thanksgiving this year. The team, led by Douglas A. Wiens, Ph.D., Washington University professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, will go to remote regions of Antarctica to place seismographs in both east and west Antarctica to learn about the earth beneath the ice, and glean information about glaciers, mountains and ice streams.

The figure shows the dynamics of a slab-tear earthquake (top), compared with a shallow thrust earthquake (bottom). The slab-tearing event typically doesn’t feature an accompanying tsunami.Seismologists at Washington University in St. Louis and their colleagues in Australia, Japan and Tonga have determined why a large earthquake in Tonga did not cause a large tsunami. A tsunami warning was issued around the Pacific Rim following the magnitude 8.0 earthquake on May 3, 2006, but the resulting tsunami was very minor and caused no damage.