(Science Alert) – At any moment, an earthquake of magnitude 6.7 or higher could ripple through California, leading infrastructure to topple, power to shut off, and buildings to collapse. Scientists expect to experience this “Big One” in their lifetimes – though they’re not sure where or when. So when researchers detected strange seismic activity along a major California fault line this week, it prompted a familiar question: Is the Big One coming? On Thursday, scientists released a study warning that the Garlock fault, which runs through the Mojave Desert in southern California, has been moving for the first time on record.
The fault is capable of producing a magnitude 8 earthquake, though it’s currently moving at a slow, continuous pace – a process known as “creeping”. The reason for this sudden change, according to the study, was destabilization caused by the Ridgecrest earthquakes in July. Those quakes – a 6.4-magnitude temblor on July 4, followed by a 7.1-magnitude quake the next day – originated along two other fault lines nearby. “We know that faults talk to one another,” Richard Allen, the director of the Seismological Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, told Business Insider. FULL REPORT
