Speaker 1: It's Night Side with Dan Ray. I'm Bzy Boston's radio.
Speaker 2: All right, we had a big shake, big shake off
Speaker 2: the coast of Maine on Monday morning. We talked about
Speaker 2: it Monday night. I think it was Monday night. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess it was. Just the week goes by very quickly.
Speaker 2: And then today, as our guest on Monday Night suggested,
Speaker 2: we had an aftershock. So we brought our guests from
Speaker 2: Monday Night back. Professor John Ebel. He is a research
Speaker 2: scientist at Boston College's Western Observatory who studies earthquakes. Professor Ebel,
Speaker 2: welcome back to Nightside. How are you.
Speaker 3: I'm doing very well. Thank you.
Speaker 2: How does someone begin? When did you realize you were
Speaker 2: going to have a career studying earthquakes?
Speaker 3: Well, I was an undergrade you it, majoring in physics
Speaker 3: at Harvard School. You may have heard of.
Speaker 2: And is that one of the that's one of those
Speaker 2: schools across the river from Boston College, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's another liberal, large college in the area.
Speaker 2: It's called the Boston College of Cambridge, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3: And that's the way I like to think of it. Anyway. Anyway,
Speaker 3: I was. I was a physics major, and at the
Speaker 3: time when I was studying physics, the the the big
Speaker 3: thing was high energy particle physics, you know, looking for
Speaker 3: smash while smashing the atom and looking for sub atomic particles.
Speaker 3: And while I thought that that was interesting, the geophysicists
Speaker 3: at at Harvard University tried to get the physics students
Speaker 3: interested in geophysics, and I went and took some courses
Speaker 3: from them and talked to the faculty there and really
Speaker 3: got interested in it. And a professor there, Rick O'Connell,
Speaker 3: who is now unfortunately passed on and couraged me to
Speaker 3: think about cal Tech. And when I looked at all
Speaker 3: the different geophysics that they had, I thought seismology, earthquake
Speaker 3: schismology was the most interesting, and so I applied and
Speaker 3: I got in, and so I cut my seismological teeth
Speaker 3: on earthquakes in California, and the rest is history.
Speaker 2: I guess, well, great place to cut your seismological teeth,
Speaker 2: that's for sure, and also another fabulous school. So I guess,
Speaker 2: let me start with some basic questions, because I know
Speaker 2: my audience out there wants to ask questions, and some
Speaker 2: of them probably aren't that they're a little apprehensive about calling,
Speaker 2: and I hope people will join the conversation. How far
Speaker 2: back are we able to trace earthquakes? I assume earthquakes
Speaker 2: have existed since the Earth was created billions of years ago. Correct.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. What an earthquake is is a place where the
Speaker 3: pressure in the rock has built up to the point
Speaker 3: where the rock cracks and slides to try to relieve
Speaker 3: that pressure. And rock, unlike skin, doesn't heal. So if
Speaker 3: the rock crack a billion years ago, geologists can still
Speaker 3: find that crack in the earth today, and when they
Speaker 3: map it, they map it it's a fault, and that fault, then,
Speaker 3: you know, goes onto maps as lines. People like to
Speaker 3: call them fault lines, although they're really surfaces in the earth.
Speaker 3: And if you look at for instance, New England, you
Speaker 3: can't actually drive more than a few miles anywhere in
Speaker 3: New England without crossing an old fault, So faults are everywhere.
Speaker 3: What's interesting for me as a seismologist is to try
Speaker 3: to figure out which are the modern active faults. And
Speaker 3: there's two possibilities there. One is that it's an old
Speaker 3: fault that is moving again in the modern stress or
Speaker 3: pressure field of the moving plates. Or the second possibility
Speaker 3: is that the rock cracks in a brand new spot
Speaker 3: and the crack runs in a different direction, and so
Speaker 3: you have the creation of a new fault. And everyone
Speaker 3: just assumes that if you have an earthquake, you have
Speaker 3: to have a fault. Well after the earthquake, yeah, because
Speaker 3: the rock crack, But before the earthquake, maybe there wasn't
Speaker 3: a crack running in that direction. Just as if you
Speaker 3: have a crack in your windshield of your car and
Speaker 3: the crack runs in one direction and then you get
Speaker 3: hit by another rock, you can have a new crack
Speaker 3: run in a different direction.
Speaker 2: How do you chart that? I mean, this earthquake on
Speaker 2: Monday was under the Atlantic Ocean. Most earthquakes, obviously by definition,
Speaker 2: are underground. How can you chart that? How's it physically?
Speaker 2: How are you physically able to do that?
Speaker 3: Well, you have to be patient. What you have to
Speaker 3: do is you have to monitor earthquakes for a very,
Speaker 3: very very long period of time. So instruments for earthquake
Speaker 3: monitoring were invented in the eighteen eighties, although there were
Speaker 3: some earlier instruments that were more primitive, but eighteen eighties
Speaker 3: is really when earthquake modern earthquake recording started and the
Speaker 3: kind of seismic networks we have today where data is
Speaker 3: transmitted over the Internet and so I can get data
Speaker 3: from anywhere in the world at Western Observatory, that really
Speaker 3: started in the nineteen sixties and into the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: So since that time period, seismologists have put out as
Speaker 3: many seismic instruments as they can in all parts of
Speaker 3: the world, and then we collect the data. We use
Speaker 3: the data to locate the earthquakes, and what we do
Speaker 3: is we look for patterns, spatial patterns in the way
Speaker 3: the earthquakes line up over the time period for which
Speaker 3: we have data. So in California they get so many
Speaker 3: earthquakes that even within a few years, you see the
Speaker 3: earthquakes lining up on many of the heck defaults out there. Here.
Speaker 3: Because we have many fewer earthquakes in any given year,
Speaker 3: we have to wait much longer to see the earthquakes
Speaker 3: line up on what potentially may be act defaults. And
Speaker 3: that's one of the important areas of my research and
Speaker 3: why an earthquake are actually the pair of earthquakes that
Speaker 3: happened today and Monday are so interesting because I look
Speaker 3: for them to line up with other earthquakes and hopefully
Speaker 3: then use that identify where possible act defaults may be.
Speaker 2: So you're trying to say, Okay, the earthquake was, what
Speaker 2: was it twenty miles off York Maine or approximately? Are
Speaker 2: they able to isolate with some proximity where the earthquake
Speaker 2: began right right?
Speaker 3: So we can isolate it offshore. We can isolate it
Speaker 3: within about probably two miles the epicenter. But if you
Speaker 3: were to look at the map of earthquakes since the
Speaker 3: mid nineteen seventies, when we started having good earthquake monitoring here,
Speaker 3: you would see that there would be a couple dozen
Speaker 3: earthquakes off shore of York, Maine, and then offshore New Hampshire,
Speaker 3: and even going down as far south as as offshore
Speaker 3: east of Cape Ann. So there's a cluster of earthquakes
Speaker 3: out there. And I've been studying those earthquakes, and now
Speaker 3: I have a couple more data points to see if
Speaker 3: they might be telling us of a possible active fault
Speaker 3: in the rock underneath the underneath in this case the
Speaker 3: Gulf of Maine that maybe gave us, for instance, the
Speaker 3: big earthquake that we had in seventeen fifty five the
Speaker 3: so called cape an earthquake.
Speaker 2: So the information that you're trying to plot, is it
Speaker 2: prospective or retrospective.
Speaker 3: It's retrospective. We cannot predict. So what I like to
Speaker 3: explain to people about what we're trying to do is
Speaker 3: if you were to go into a movie and you
Speaker 3: were to watch let's say one minute of the movie.
Speaker 3: All right, so you watch one minute of this movie,
Speaker 3: and then you're trying to guess the plot. You're trying
Speaker 3: to guess the main characters. You're trying to guess what
Speaker 3: happened in the past and what will happen in the
Speaker 3: in the rest of the movie, in the future of
Speaker 3: the movie. Well, that's kind of where we are right
Speaker 3: now with earthquake monitoring, because the earthquake patterns play out
Speaker 3: probably over many hundreds to thousands of years, and we
Speaker 3: have really good data for about, you know, fifty years
Speaker 3: here in New England right now. So it's like watching
Speaker 3: one minute of the movie and trying to guess what
Speaker 3: the whole what the whole movie is all about.
Speaker 2: Well, I have more questions, and my guest is Professor
Speaker 2: John Ebel. He is at Boston College, a seismologist studies earthquakes.
Speaker 2: I think it's fascinating to think that that you're studying
Speaker 2: something which is it's not abstract, but it's not something
Speaker 2: that can be seen the nake by the naked eye,
Speaker 2: and yet you're able to gather information. And of course
Speaker 2: this has been going on for time, immemoriam, and I'd
Speaker 2: love to know what people five thousand or ten thousand
Speaker 2: years ago thought when the earth moved. I don't know
Speaker 2: if there's any sort of records. I got a million questions,
Speaker 2: and if you'd like to join the conversation, we'll be
Speaker 2: happy to go to phone calls as well. I appreciate
Speaker 2: the fact that Professor Evil, who's with us tonight, he
Speaker 2: has had a very busy week. I would bet you
Speaker 2: that you probably have done more than a few interviews
Speaker 2: this week. Am I correct?
Speaker 3: You are correct, indeed, and not just in the Boston area,
Speaker 3: but up in Maine as well.
Speaker 2: Oh, I will bet, I will bet. We'll take a
Speaker 2: quick break six one seven, two, five, four ten thirty
Speaker 2: or six one seven, nine three ten thirty. Again. I
Speaker 2: am in the business of asking questions and learning, and
Speaker 2: that's what excites me about this interview. I hope that
Speaker 2: It's what excites me about every interview that I do.
Speaker 2: I hope this is of interest to you because this
Speaker 2: is not a new phenomenon. It's been around, as I say,
Speaker 2: as long as as as I guess man has recorded
Speaker 2: it in some form of fashion movie. Back on the
Speaker 2: night Side with my guest right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
Speaker 1: night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2: We've got a bunch of phone calls. We're going to
Speaker 2: get to phone calls, but I just want to ask
Speaker 2: one more sort of I would say, fundamental maybe threshold question.
Speaker 2: Do we know obviously earthquakes must have been going on
Speaker 2: since time in Memoriam, but are the writings hieroglyphics? You
Speaker 2: know that we can say earth in fact earthquakes occurred
Speaker 2: ten thousand years ago. I mean, we know, we must
Speaker 2: intellectually know that they had to have been occurring, But
Speaker 2: one of the are they recorded and obviously not like
Speaker 2: what you record? But is there any any what's the
Speaker 2: earliest writings about earthquakes?
Speaker 3: There's lots and lots of evidence of past earthquakes going
Speaker 3: through historic time, prehistoric time, and even before that. So
Speaker 3: let's talk about the historic record. First, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of good historical evidence of strong earthquakes going right back
Speaker 3: to the time when the Pilgrims first landed. In fact,
Speaker 3: even before that, when European explorers were still looking you know,
Speaker 3: we're still landing on the North American continent and looking
Speaker 3: at them. I have a book I published a few
Speaker 3: years ago about earthquakes in New England. Just it's available
Speaker 3: to the general public on Amazon, and I go through
Speaker 3: the history of earthquakes, starting with the first one that
Speaker 3: the Pilgrims felt, which was in sixteen thirty eight, which
Speaker 3: actually was quite a strong shake, and go through earthquakes
Speaker 3: after that seventeen fifty five, go right up to the
Speaker 3: present and the earthquake in nineteen eighty eight. But what
Speaker 3: we know is all of the Native American tribes here
Speaker 3: in the northeastern part of North America had a word
Speaker 3: for earthquake in their languages. And you only have a
Speaker 3: word if there's some reason for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fascinating, just fascinating. Let's go to somep phone calls,
Speaker 2: let's see want to ask and again I get more
Speaker 2: excited about doing an hour like this than doing an
Speaker 2: hour on politics. Let me start it off with Jen
Speaker 2: in Burlington. Jen, thanks for calling in. You'll have professor
Speaker 2: John Ebel abel Ebel, I'm sorry, sir, go right ahead, Jen.
Speaker 4: Hi, thanks for taking my call. So my understanding. My
Speaker 4: understanding is that offshore earthquakes often times cause tsunamis like
Speaker 4: the gigantic Boxing Day one sounds like more often in
Speaker 4: Asia than around here. What an earthquake in the Gulf
Speaker 4: of Maine ever have the ability to cause a tsunami
Speaker 4: in this area.
Speaker 3: Yes, indeed. So let's talk a little bit about the
Speaker 3: history of tsunamis in the Atlantic. The most important earthquake
Speaker 3: for US was one that occurred in nineteen twenty nine.
Speaker 3: It occurred the epicenter was actually south of Newfoundland, so
Speaker 3: it's well east of New England seven point two earthquake.
Speaker 3: It was felt all throughout New England and it caused
Speaker 3: a tsunami that actually killed probably twenty to thirty people
Speaker 3: in southern Newfoundland. Ten foot wall of water came in
Speaker 3: on shore there. That tsunami was small, but was noticed
Speaker 3: in Nova Scotia, about a foot high there. It was
Speaker 3: recorded on tide gages in Boston Harbor, although the wave
Speaker 3: was so small there that it wasn't noticed by people.
Speaker 3: But if you look at right along the edge of
Speaker 3: what we call the continental shelf, where the ocean where
Speaker 3: the continent ends and the ocean deepened to the very
Speaker 3: very deep part of the Atlantic Ocean, there are earthquakes
Speaker 3: actually all along that margin, from south of Newfoundland all
Speaker 3: the way down to south of Long Island. And if
Speaker 3: we had a magnitude let's say, seven earthquakes anywhere along
Speaker 3: that stretch, it very likely would cause a tsunami that
Speaker 3: would move on shore. And there's actually some geologic evidence
Speaker 3: of a tsunami that probably came on shore about twenty
Speaker 3: two hundred years ago in coastal New Hampshire. So tsunamis
Speaker 3: are a possibility here, although very rare compared to what
Speaker 3: they have in Indonesia and Alaskan places like that.
Speaker 2: Amazing, Yeah, it is, truly, it's truly amazing. This is
Speaker 2: a really dumb question, but are there any land masses
Speaker 2: that exist, either in the ocean or anywhere that a
Speaker 2: thought to be have been caused by an earthquake?
Speaker 3: So the land masses themselves are caused by basically the
Speaker 3: lightest material earth materials throughout Earth history floating to the top.
Speaker 3: So just as if you were to, you know, put
Speaker 3: a bunch of a dig a bunch of dirt from
Speaker 3: your backyard and put it in a bucket and put
Speaker 3: water in it, the lightest materials like you know, wood
Speaker 3: and grass and things like that would float to the top. Well,
Speaker 3: the same thing happens over a much slower rate with
Speaker 3: the rock, so you don't have earthquakes with that process.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, as the plates move to
Speaker 3: as the material moves to the surface, they cool and
Speaker 3: they form these hard plates, and the circulation of hot
Speaker 3: material from the interior of the earth pushes those plates around,
Speaker 3: and that's where those plates rubbed together that you have
Speaker 3: most of the earthquakes. And so the Santa Dora's fault
Speaker 3: is a place where two plates are rubbing together. In
Speaker 3: California underneath Alaska, southern Alaska, you have Pacific Ocean plates
Speaker 3: sliding under the North American plate there. So anytime you
Speaker 3: have two plates rubbing together, you have earthquakes, and then
Speaker 3: you have a few earthquakes. Only about probably ten percent
Speaker 3: of the world's earthquakes occur within the centers of plates
Speaker 3: because of the pressure that builds up as the plates
Speaker 3: are moving around, so kindinal crust is not caused by
Speaker 3: earthquakes or formed by earthquakes, but earthquakes occur at the
Speaker 3: edges of the plates, including of many of the continents.
Speaker 2: All right, Jang, really good question. Thank you for joining
Speaker 2: us tonight.
Speaker 4: Thank you have a great night.
Speaker 5: Guys, you too.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 2: All right, let me get one more in here if
Speaker 2: I can, before the we get to the nine thirty
Speaker 2: news in Connecticut. Rachel, you are on with Professor John Ebel.
Speaker 2: Go right ahead, Rachel.
Speaker 6: Hello, mister Ebel. I have two questions. One, are you
Speaker 6: familiar with the George's Bank? The water is above this
Speaker 6: round under the water, and that there's like a shelf,
Speaker 6: and would that affect.
Speaker 2: Rachel. I think you have a phone on and you
Speaker 2: have the radio one in the background, and I think
Speaker 2: you're being distracted by it or is someone able to
Speaker 2: turn the phone down. I think you're having a tough
Speaker 2: time with the radio in the background. You're not supposed
Speaker 2: to have that. You got it down, Okay, go ahead,
Speaker 2: formulate your question again because I think that you'll you'll
Speaker 2: do better without the radio of the background.
Speaker 7: Go ahead.
Speaker 6: There's a place called George's Bank, Busy Coast and I
Speaker 6: was wondering what John Eball thought about that collapsing in
Speaker 6: an earthquake and causing like a tsunami like the former
Speaker 6: Calis mentioned.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's interesting. He's already mentioned George's Bank. But let's
Speaker 2: let's see what he has to say to that question.
Speaker 2: That's an interesting question, Professor.
Speaker 3: So, George's Bank is the part of the edge of
Speaker 3: the North American continent, and the continent at one time
Speaker 3: had uh had earthquake activity associated with collisions and splitting
Speaker 3: with pass plates. For instance, if you were here two
Speaker 3: hundred million years ago, you could walk from Boston here
Speaker 3: to Morocco because those two land masses were connected. So
Speaker 3: George's Bank and actually most of the Boston area, the
Speaker 3: rocks are more related to northern northwestern most Africa than
Speaker 3: they are to the rest of North America. And so
Speaker 3: any time you have plates colliding or you have then
Speaker 3: plates splitting apart, you have faults forms. So there's very
Speaker 3: likely faults beneath George's Bank and the rock beneath George's Bank,
Speaker 3: just as there is probably all up and down the
Speaker 3: East coast off shore. The tsunamis seem to be most
Speaker 3: likely associated with where you go from the shallow water
Speaker 3: to the deep ocean, because you have a lot of
Speaker 3: sediments there and the earthquake shaking can trigger offshore slumps
Speaker 3: in those sediments, so you don't see them at the surface,
Speaker 3: but the sediment slump and that then causes the water
Speaker 3: to readjust and that's what causes the tsunamis. In nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty nine, there were actually there was a submarine slump
Speaker 3: that broke a lot of telephone cables between North America
Speaker 3: and Europe. And so that's how that slump actually got
Speaker 3: mapped because of the cable breaks.
Speaker 6: So the next question I had is a few can
Speaker 6: recall I had sent you a letter in twenty and
Speaker 6: thirteen about a summer quake, and I was curious, if
Speaker 6: you believe in God and if you believe that people
Speaker 6: that are on the Earth can be affected by earthquakes
Speaker 6: caused by God?
Speaker 3: So earthquakes caused by God, That's something that we had.
Speaker 2: A theological question here, not necessarily a seigebological question. Go ahead, professor.
Speaker 3: So my late friend father Jimskian would have been very
Speaker 3: happy to deal with this question too, but I'm happy
Speaker 3: to take it. So you know, God created the earth,
Speaker 3: and the Earth is evolving all the time, and the
Speaker 3: plates are moving, and as the plates move, there are earthquakes.
Speaker 3: So in that sense, God causes earthquakes because it's part
Speaker 3: of his natural creation. Does any particular earthquake is Did
Speaker 3: God point to the ground at that point and say
Speaker 3: there's going to be an earthquake there today? I personally
Speaker 3: would not believe that because I just don't think that
Speaker 3: that that's the way God acts. But earthquakes are a
Speaker 3: natural part of our ecosystem, just as as hurricanes are, as,
Speaker 3: snowstorms are as, as you know, meteors up in the
Speaker 3: sky are and all that sort of thing. So I,
Speaker 3: you know, now we're getting into theology. But I don't
Speaker 3: think God is, you know, pointing to the earth and
Speaker 3: say I'm going to cause an earthquake there today because
Speaker 3: of whatever reason.
Speaker 2: Rachel, I think that's a pretty good answer, Hope help.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, appreciate your call. Thank you. We
Speaker 2: have a news break at the bottom of the hour
Speaker 2: of Florence's next CG and Cambridge, Row and Newton. We
Speaker 2: get them all in the only lines open right now
Speaker 2: six one, seven, nine, three, ten thirty. I just think
Speaker 2: it's it's it's an amazing field of study, and that's
Speaker 2: why it fascinates me. I hope it fascinates you. If
Speaker 2: you want to jump on, we'll get you on before
Speaker 2: the ten o'clock news, and we will have to say
Speaker 2: good bad good night to our professor. He's a professor
Speaker 2: at Boston College, also the Western Observatory, Professor John Ebel.
Speaker 2: We will be back on Nightside right after this.
Speaker 1: You're on night Side with Dan Ray. I'm w b Z,
Speaker 1: Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2: We're back to phone calls. My guest is, I'm doctor
Speaker 2: John Ebel. He is a Boston College professor. He works
Speaker 2: and has worked for many years at Boston College's Western Observatory.
Speaker 2: I interviewed him for Channel four probably ten years more
Speaker 2: than ten years ago, twenty years ago. Believe it or not,
Speaker 2: I'm dating us, doctor. This is it's frightening when I
Speaker 2: realize how long I've been doing radio after television. Florence
Speaker 2: is in grovelin Florence. You are on with my guest,
Speaker 2: doctor John Ebel.
Speaker 8: Go right ahead, yes, goody name, then good evening, professor, Professor.
Speaker 8: I have two things I want to mention. The second
Speaker 8: one's question. Okay, but The first thing I wanted to
Speaker 8: mention about several years ago, might be six or seven,
Speaker 8: we had I'm in the Merrimack Valley, so I'm close
Speaker 8: to the New Hampshire border, and we had a quake
Speaker 8: that menatured. They said four point zero okay, and everything
Speaker 8: shook in our house. The chair in the living room
Speaker 8: I was sitting in, all our ceiling fans were shaking. Bed.
Speaker 8: You must recall that, yes, I do okay. And the
Speaker 8: other thing, the question I wanted to ask some years back,
Speaker 8: something I was watching on TV and a content was
Speaker 8: named They were talking about earthquakes, and they said that
Speaker 8: in New England, here we are sitting on one of
Speaker 8: the largest faults in your studies. Have you ever heard
Speaker 8: that mentioning or do you know what? That's a fact?
Speaker 2: If anybody's going to know, it's this, it's the gentleman
Speaker 2: you're talking to, flounce, go right ahead, doctor.
Speaker 3: So people want to associate earthquakes with a single fault,
Speaker 3: and that's really a misconception. It's a misconception in California,
Speaker 3: it's a misconception in Japan, it's a misconception in China
Speaker 3: and Turkey, anywhere in the world. There's actually many, many,
Speaker 3: many different faults, and earthquakes in different places are associated
Speaker 3: with with different faults or typically are associated with different faults.
Speaker 3: So for example, I know, as we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 3: I think that there probably is a fault and an
Speaker 3: active fault offshore east of York, Maine and running down
Speaker 3: to east of Cape ann But then we have earthquakes,
Speaker 3: for instance, in the newberry Port area, and going back
Speaker 3: to a pretty strong earthquake that did damage in seventeen
Speaker 3: twenty seven, that would be associated with a different fault.
Speaker 3: There have been earthquakes down along the south coast of
Speaker 3: Massachusetts those would be associated with different faults. Earthquakes that
Speaker 3: Moodus Connecticut, different fault there. So there's no one single
Speaker 3: fault And that's what makes my research so challenging because
Speaker 3: there's just there's so many earthquakes in so many different places,
Speaker 3: and there's so many different possible faults that we have
Speaker 3: to study. So it's really like a huge puzzle and
Speaker 3: we don't even have all the puzzle pieces.
Speaker 2: All right, hope that answer the question, Florence welcome, profess.
Speaker 8: That kind of rattled me to hear that comment years ago,
Speaker 8: and always wanted to know was a fact.
Speaker 2: Yep, all right, Thanks Thanks Florence, talk to you soon.
Speaker 2: Appreciate your question. Let me go next to CJ in Cambridge. CJ,
Speaker 2: you were next on NIGHTSYB professor with Professor John Evil.
Speaker 2: Go right ahead, c.
Speaker 9: J, Jean Ray, and thank you to Evil. What I'm
Speaker 9: concerned about is I live on a hills that's three
Speaker 9: hundred and forty feet above sea level. That's where my
Speaker 9: house sits, and I didn't feel that earthquake at all.
Speaker 9: Are they more likely to be under the water or
Speaker 9: can they go right through hills and mountains the falls
Speaker 9: The earthquake releases vibrational waves, and that's what we feel
Speaker 9: as the earthquake shaking. I was at Western Observatory Monday
Speaker 9: morning when this earthquake occurred.
Speaker 3: I did not feel it. And when there have been
Speaker 3: other earthquakes felt in the Boston area when I've been
Speaker 3: at Western Observatory, I don't feel those either. And if
Speaker 3: you're in Cambridge and you're up high, I can understand
Speaker 3: why you did not feel the earthquake. So let me
Speaker 3: give you a little, a little one minute thumbnail about
Speaker 3: who tends to feel earthquakes. Heart Rock shakes, but it
Speaker 3: shakes just as with the waves, and it doesn't shake
Speaker 3: more strongly. It actually kind of shakes a little bit
Speaker 3: less strongly than areas around the Areas that shake most
Speaker 3: strongly are areas where you have thick soft soils. So
Speaker 3: where do you have thick soft soils. You have them
Speaker 3: in river bottom areas, So for instance, if you're along
Speaker 3: the Charles River, you will feel shaking more strongly than
Speaker 3: if you're up higher in Cambridge. If you're in a
Speaker 3: floodplain like the Sudbury River floodplain, you will feel the
Speaker 3: earthquakes more strongly. Landfill amplifies ground shaking also, so people
Speaker 3: who are in low lying areas, usually near water bodies
Speaker 3: where you have thick sediments, they tend to feel amplified
Speaker 3: ground shaking. So, as I said, I don't feel the earthquakes.
Speaker 3: So in twenty eleven, there was an earthquake down in Virginia,
Speaker 3: actually a five point nine that I was at Western Observatory.
Speaker 3: I didn't feel it, but within a minute or so
Speaker 3: I was looking at the seismograph and watching the thing
Speaker 3: just going back and forth like crazy. We got to
Speaker 3: call at Western Observatory about a hospital that was in
Speaker 3: Beverly maybe or someplace like that where they were evacuating
Speaker 3: the hospital because the building shook so strongly, and that
Speaker 3: hospital was built on soft soils where the ground shaking
Speaker 3: was amplified. So where you are and what the ground
Speaker 3: conditions are can determine whether you feel lots of shaking,
Speaker 3: little shaking, or perhaps no shaking at all.
Speaker 2: Great question, CJ. Hope that answers it for you.
Speaker 3: Thank you very good, Thank you, goody.
Speaker 2: Talk to you soon, and we have more callers coming
Speaker 2: in and we're going to get more calls. Professor, you
Speaker 2: lit the lines up tonight. A lot of interest in this,
Speaker 2: and I'm delighted. We'll be back on Nightside with my guest,
Speaker 2: Boston College professor seismiologist, Professor John Ebel, back on Nightside
Speaker 2: right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
Speaker 1: nights Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2: Let's go to Ron and Ron appreciate you waiting your patience.
Speaker 10: You're next on Nightside, Hie, I, Dan, thank you very
Speaker 10: much for having this son. Professor, I haven't experienced. I
Speaker 10: was fortunate to be a part of a response to
Speaker 10: the bam Iran earthquake day after Christmas in two thousand
Speaker 10: and three, it was a six point six, resulting in
Speaker 10: about a thirty four or thirty five thousand deaths two
Speaker 10: hundred thousand injured. Supposedly, it was a slowing velocity until
Speaker 10: it ultimately fractured at the at the epicenter where we
Speaker 10: could actually see it as we landed. I'm curious that
Speaker 10: the two things the city was in historic city, that
Speaker 10: buildings were comprised mostly of Adobe brick mud. The interesting
Speaker 10: thing was it was all crumbled except for the mosque.
Speaker 10: The mosque was curious. And I don't know whether it's
Speaker 10: the function of the design and materials. Certainly it should
Speaker 10: involve physics and architecture, but it almost looked untouched. And
Speaker 10: I don't know whether it was because of the double
Speaker 10: dome design, but it caused me to think about you know,
Speaker 10: I'm sure that they have different construction codes, perhaps in California,
Speaker 10: given the number of earthquakes they have. Let me drive
Speaker 10: you to your question, wrong, what will it should we
Speaker 10: adopt different codes.
Speaker 9: In general?
Speaker 3: Building codes? Yeah, so let's talk about building codes for
Speaker 3: a second. And and that bomb earthquake in Iran was
Speaker 3: was just you know, heartrending. Adobe is just horrible. It
Speaker 3: will not shake at all. As soon as it starts shaking,
Speaker 3: it cracks and collapses. It's a heavy structure, so anyone
Speaker 3: within the structure will suffer. You're right about the mosque
Speaker 3: the the I don't know what kind of materials they
Speaker 3: would have used for the mosque, but probably not adobe brick.
Speaker 3: I'll bet it was built of more competent stone. But
Speaker 3: the form of the mosque with a domed ceiling would
Speaker 3: tend to protect it some from collapse. In the United States,
Speaker 3: since the nineteen seventies, there have been seismic provisions in
Speaker 3: the building codes in various places. In Massachusetts were one
Speaker 3: of the first to adopt the sizement provision in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy five because of the foresight of some engineering professors
Speaker 3: over the MIT, and since then FEMA has been getting
Speaker 3: all of the states to put seismic provisions in their
Speaker 3: building coats. We have a couple lucky things. First of all,
Speaker 3: our houses tend to be made of wood. Wood frame
Speaker 3: can bend an earthquake shaking, so it tends not to
Speaker 3: collapse unless you have a problem with the foundation or
Speaker 3: termite damage or something. So that's one advantage. Our roofs
Speaker 3: are not real heavy Japan. They tend to have very
Speaker 3: heavy tile roofs and that can be a problem. Where
Speaker 3: we do take damage is in masonry buildings, So for instance,
Speaker 3: brick buildings or center block buildings will not do well
Speaker 3: in earthquakes. For the typical home, the chimney will be
Speaker 3: the thing that will that will take the damage. But
Speaker 3: any modern building that's put up is built to withstand earthquakes.
Speaker 3: When the Kanti Forum at Boston College was built, I
Speaker 3: actually had one of the senior officials of Boston College
Speaker 3: come to me and said, he said, to me, you
Speaker 3: cost me money. I said, what are you talking about.
Speaker 3: He says, we had to put extra steel into the
Speaker 3: Kanti Forum if for earthquake safety. And all I could
Speaker 3: say was, well, I'm glad you did, because if I'm
Speaker 3: in that building, I don't want it to come down
Speaker 3: if there's earthquakes. So we do have we do have
Speaker 3: earthquake We do have earthquake provisions in our building codes,
Speaker 3: and they're actually being improved all the time.
Speaker 2: Ron Greg I got a bunch of calls. I got
Speaker 2: to get to my friend. I owe you a phone call.
Speaker 2: Thank you, buddy, talk to you thank you, good night.
Speaker 2: We're going to try to get everyone in here. We'll
Speaker 2: see what we can do. Jack down of the Cape
Speaker 2: great response to night to call as professor Jack on
Speaker 2: Cape cod go right ahead.
Speaker 7: Well, I I, having grown up in southern California, I
Speaker 7: felt that quake. I kind of didn't register until I
Speaker 7: heard it on the news and so forth, but I
Speaker 7: kind of had a then kind of perked my mind.
Speaker 7: I said, was that an earthquake? And didn't think about it,
Speaker 7: but anyway, I did feel it. But the professor kind
Speaker 7: of going into a different direction, what do you what
Speaker 7: is your thoughts on the Pangaea uh super continent and
Speaker 7: following up on that, what are your thoughts on the
Speaker 7: expanding Earth theory?
Speaker 3: So Pangea definitely existed. It was a little over two
Speaker 3: hundred million years ago where all the continents came together
Speaker 3: and we're really all smashed together on one part of
Speaker 3: the planet. And there were actually earlier times when super
Speaker 3: continents had formed, at least from what we can map
Speaker 3: out from deciphering the early tectonics of the Earth. So
Speaker 3: that definitely happens. Why the contents come together and then
Speaker 3: split apart is actually something of a very interesting debate
Speaker 3: among seismo, among geoscientists in general, the expanding Earth theory.
Speaker 3: The Earth is not expanding. The Earth is a solid ball.
Speaker 3: Gravity really holds it in place, so it doesn't get
Speaker 3: it doesn't get bigger. But what's happening is over time,
Speaker 3: the heat that's stored within the Earth is coming out,
Speaker 3: and that's pushing the tectonic plates. That's giving us our volcanoes,
Speaker 3: and that's what's making us a very active planet and
Speaker 3: does things like, for instance, creates hydro thermal events that
Speaker 3: concentrate minerals that are used for you know, all kinds
Speaker 3: of processes these days in industrial situations. So the fact
Speaker 3: that we live on an active planet is probably a
Speaker 3: great boon to helping life on Earth and human beings
Speaker 3: evolve into the forms that we have today. Superat question.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thanks, Jack, appreciate it. Unless I get at
Speaker 2: least one more, and we'll give a shot. George and
Speaker 2: new Bedford you're next one. Nice, I go ahead, George.
Speaker 5: All right. I tuned in late, so I don't know
Speaker 5: if you covered this already, but six years ago I
Speaker 5: heard a geology report that predicted within ten years, which
Speaker 5: is rapidly coming. There would be a mid Atlantic major
Speaker 5: earthquake which would create tsunamis the boat for Europe and
Speaker 5: the United States, and certainly things like wind generators would
Speaker 5: be wiped out. Is that still an accurate prediction.
Speaker 3: It's not in the middle of the Atlantic. I think
Speaker 3: what you're talking about is the volcanic islands down off
Speaker 3: of Africa, the Azors. Those islands, UH have some unstable
Speaker 3: side to them that if they were to slump into
Speaker 3: the ocean very very quickly in a major landslide, that
Speaker 3: would cause a tsunami that would spread all throughout the
Speaker 3: Atlantic Ocean.
Speaker 5: This was at least stated earthquake, an Atlantic earth quick
Speaker 5: All right, well ad slide.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, Well, George, we're flat out of time.
Speaker 2: I wish I wish you'd called earlier. I apologize to
Speaker 2: the callers in the line. I also apologize and wish
Speaker 2: your guys had called earlier. Professor Ebel, this has been
Speaker 2: a great hour. I'm surprised and gratified that the amount
Speaker 2: of interest that people have in this issue. And maybe
Speaker 2: a couple of months from now we'll try to get
Speaker 2: you to come back and follow up the conversation. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much for your time. Tonight, and particularly in
Speaker 2: the middle of a very long week for.
Speaker 3: You, I'd be happy to talk to you again.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Professor John Evil of Boston College
Speaker 2: and also the Western Observatory when we get back on
Speaker 2: to talk about Robert Kennedy Junior's difficult day at the
Speaker 2: US Senate in Washington,