Precariously Balanced Boulder Data
<p>At some date in an indefinite future, a San Andreas fault — extending from Los Angeles to San Francisco — will generate a great earthquake [EQ]. But the good news, “according to new work <a href="https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm23/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/1303303" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">presented this week</a> at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, the ground there will shake up to 65% less violently than official hazard models suggest.” The 5 labeled + precariously balanced boulders in the photo you can see are located ‘in Lovejoy Buttes, a place in northern Los Angeles County that sits just 15 kilometers from the fault.’ “By dating when the rocks first became fragile and analyzing their structures to assess the maximum shaking they could withstand, the researchers could test official predictions against thousands of years of earthquakes.” The irony is their hazard estimates are totally inconsistent with the precariously balanced rock data. Daniel Trugman, a seismologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, said, “They’ve applied probably the most rigorous methodology that I’ve ever seen to try and solve this problem.</p>
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