January 29, 2025 • 38 mins
On Monday of this week, an earthquake occurred off the coast of York Harbor, Maine. Monday’s quake had a magnitude of 3.8 and was felt in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and even Rhode Island! Two days later, an aftershock occurred Wednesday morning six miles southeast of York Harbor, Maine, according to the United States Geological Survey, with a magnitude of 2.0. What exactly is an earthquake and how often do they occur in New England? John Ebel, Ph.D. research scientist from Boston College's Weston Observatory, who studies earthquakes, joined us to discuss!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Night Side with Dan Ray. I'm Bzy Boston's radio.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
All right, we had a big shake, big shake off
the coast of Maine on Monday morning. We talked about
it Monday night. I think it was Monday night. Yeah,
I guess it was. Just the week goes by very quickly.
And then today, as our guest on Monday Night suggested,
(00:26):
we had an aftershock. So we brought our guests from
Monday Night back. Professor John Ebel. He is a research
scientist at Boston College's Western Observatory who studies earthquakes. Professor Ebel,
welcome back to Nightside. How are you.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I'm doing very well. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
How does someone begin? When did you realize you were
going to have a career studying earthquakes?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Well, I was an undergrade you it, majoring in physics
at Harvard School. You may have heard of.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
And is that one of the that's one of those
schools across the river from Boston College, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yeah, it's another liberal, large college in the area.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
It's called the Boston College of Cambridge, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
And that's the way I like to think of it. Anyway. Anyway,
I was. I was a physics major, and at the
time when I was studying physics, the the the big
thing was high energy particle physics, you know, looking for
smash while smashing the atom and looking for sub atomic particles.
And while I thought that that was interesting, the geophysicists
(01:40):
at at Harvard University tried to get the physics students
interested in geophysics, and I went and took some courses
from them and talked to the faculty there and really
got interested in it. And a professor there, Rick O'Connell,
who is now unfortunately passed on and couraged me to
(02:01):
think about cal Tech. And when I looked at all
the different geophysics that they had, I thought seismology, earthquake
schismology was the most interesting, and so I applied and
I got in, and so I cut my seismological teeth
on earthquakes in California, and the rest is history.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
I guess, well, great place to cut your seismological teeth,
that's for sure, and also another fabulous school. So I guess,
let me start with some basic questions, because I know
my audience out there wants to ask questions, and some
of them probably aren't that they're a little apprehensive about calling,
(02:39):
and I hope people will join the conversation. How far
back are we able to trace earthquakes? I assume earthquakes
have existed since the Earth was created billions of years ago. Correct.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Absolutely. What an earthquake is is a place where the
pressure in the rock has built up to the point
where the rock cracks and slides to try to relieve
that pressure. And rock, unlike skin, doesn't heal. So if
the rock crack a billion years ago, geologists can still
(03:19):
find that crack in the earth today, and when they
map it, they map it it's a fault, and that fault, then,
you know, goes onto maps as lines. People like to
call them fault lines, although they're really surfaces in the earth.
And if you look at for instance, New England, you
can't actually drive more than a few miles anywhere in
(03:40):
New England without crossing an old fault, So faults are everywhere.
What's interesting for me as a seismologist is to try
to figure out which are the modern active faults. And
there's two possibilities there. One is that it's an old
fault that is moving again in the modern stress or
(04:02):
pressure field of the moving plates. Or the second possibility
is that the rock cracks in a brand new spot
and the crack runs in a different direction, and so
you have the creation of a new fault. And everyone
just assumes that if you have an earthquake, you have
to have a fault. Well after the earthquake, yeah, because
the rock crack, But before the earthquake, maybe there wasn't
a crack running in that direction. Just as if you
(04:25):
have a crack in your windshield of your car and
the crack runs in one direction and then you get
hit by another rock, you can have a new crack
run in a different direction.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
How do you chart that? I mean, this earthquake on
Monday was under the Atlantic Ocean. Most earthquakes, obviously by definition,
are underground. How can you chart that? How's it physically?
How are you physically able to do that?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Well, you have to be patient. What you have to
do is you have to monitor earthquakes for a very,
very very long period of time. So instruments for earthquake
monitoring were invented in the eighteen eighties, although there were
some earlier instruments that were more primitive, but eighteen eighties
(05:11):
is really when earthquake modern earthquake recording started and the
kind of seismic networks we have today where data is
transmitted over the Internet and so I can get data
from anywhere in the world at Western Observatory, that really
started in the nineteen sixties and into the nineteen seventies.
So since that time period, seismologists have put out as
(05:34):
many seismic instruments as they can in all parts of
the world, and then we collect the data. We use
the data to locate the earthquakes, and what we do
is we look for patterns, spatial patterns in the way
the earthquakes line up over the time period for which
we have data. So in California they get so many
(05:54):
earthquakes that even within a few years, you see the
earthquakes lining up on many of the heck defaults out there. Here.
Because we have many fewer earthquakes in any given year,
we have to wait much longer to see the earthquakes
line up on what potentially may be act defaults. And
that's one of the important areas of my research and
why an earthquake are actually the pair of earthquakes that
(06:16):
happened today and Monday are so interesting because I look
for them to line up with other earthquakes and hopefully
then use that identify where possible act defaults may be.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
So you're trying to say, Okay, the earthquake was, what
was it twenty miles off York Maine or approximately? Are
they able to isolate with some proximity where the earthquake
began right right?
Speaker 3 (06:42):
So we can isolate it offshore. We can isolate it
within about probably two miles the epicenter. But if you
were to look at the map of earthquakes since the
mid nineteen seventies, when we started having good earthquake monitoring here,
you would see that there would be a couple dozen
earthquakes off shore of York, Maine, and then offshore New Hampshire,
(07:05):
and even going down as far south as as offshore
east of Cape Ann. So there's a cluster of earthquakes
out there. And I've been studying those earthquakes, and now
I have a couple more data points to see if
they might be telling us of a possible active fault
in the rock underneath the underneath in this case the
(07:26):
Gulf of Maine that maybe gave us, for instance, the
big earthquake that we had in seventeen fifty five the
so called cape an earthquake.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
So the information that you're trying to plot, is it
prospective or retrospective.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
It's retrospective. We cannot predict. So what I like to
explain to people about what we're trying to do is
if you were to go into a movie and you
were to watch let's say one minute of the movie.
All right, so you watch one minute of this movie,
and then you're trying to guess the plot. You're trying
(08:06):
to guess the main characters. You're trying to guess what
happened in the past and what will happen in the
in the rest of the movie, in the future of
the movie. Well, that's kind of where we are right
now with earthquake monitoring, because the earthquake patterns play out
probably over many hundreds to thousands of years, and we
have really good data for about, you know, fifty years
(08:27):
here in New England right now. So it's like watching
one minute of the movie and trying to guess what
the whole what the whole movie is all about.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Well, I have more questions, and my guest is Professor
John Ebel. He is at Boston College, a seismologist studies earthquakes.
I think it's fascinating to think that that you're studying
something which is it's not abstract, but it's not something
that can be seen the nake by the naked eye,
(08:56):
and yet you're able to gather information. And of course
this has been going on for time, immemoriam, and I'd
love to know what people five thousand or ten thousand
years ago thought when the earth moved. I don't know
if there's any sort of records. I got a million questions,
and if you'd like to join the conversation, we'll be
happy to go to phone calls as well. I appreciate
(09:17):
the fact that Professor Evil, who's with us tonight, he
has had a very busy week. I would bet you
that you probably have done more than a few interviews
this week. Am I correct?
Speaker 3 (09:28):
You are correct, indeed, and not just in the Boston area,
but up in Maine as well.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Oh, I will bet, I will bet. We'll take a
quick break six one seven, two, five, four ten thirty
or six one seven, nine three ten thirty. Again. I
am in the business of asking questions and learning, and
that's what excites me about this interview. I hope that
It's what excites me about every interview that I do.
I hope this is of interest to you because this
is not a new phenomenon. It's been around, as I say,
(09:56):
as long as as as I guess man has recorded
it in some form of fashion movie. Back on the
night Side with my guest right after this.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
We've got a bunch of phone calls. We're going to
get to phone calls, but I just want to ask
one more sort of I would say, fundamental maybe threshold question.
Do we know obviously earthquakes must have been going on
since time in Memoriam, but are the writings hieroglyphics? You
(10:37):
know that we can say earth in fact earthquakes occurred
ten thousand years ago. I mean, we know, we must
intellectually know that they had to have been occurring, But
one of the are they recorded and obviously not like
what you record? But is there any any what's the
earliest writings about earthquakes?
Speaker 3 (10:58):
There's lots and lots of evidence of past earthquakes going
through historic time, prehistoric time, and even before that. So
let's talk about the historic record. First, there's a lot
of good historical evidence of strong earthquakes going right back
(11:19):
to the time when the Pilgrims first landed. In fact,
even before that, when European explorers were still looking you know,
we're still landing on the North American continent and looking
at them. I have a book I published a few
years ago about earthquakes in New England. Just it's available
to the general public on Amazon, and I go through
(11:43):
the history of earthquakes, starting with the first one that
the Pilgrims felt, which was in sixteen thirty eight, which
actually was quite a strong shake, and go through earthquakes
after that seventeen fifty five, go right up to the
present and the earthquake in nineteen eighty eight. But what
we know is all of the Native American tribes here
(12:04):
in the northeastern part of North America had a word
for earthquake in their languages. And you only have a
word if there's some reason for it.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, fascinating, just fascinating. Let's go to somep phone calls,
let's see want to ask and again I get more
excited about doing an hour like this than doing an
hour on politics. Let me start it off with Jen
in Burlington. Jen, thanks for calling in. You'll have professor
John Ebel abel Ebel, I'm sorry, sir, go right ahead, Jen.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
Hi, thanks for taking my call. So my understanding. My
understanding is that offshore earthquakes often times cause tsunamis like
the gigantic Boxing Day one sounds like more often in
Asia than around here. What an earthquake in the Gulf
of Maine ever have the ability to cause a tsunami
(13:03):
in this area.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Yes, indeed. So let's talk a little bit about the
history of tsunamis in the Atlantic. The most important earthquake
for US was one that occurred in nineteen twenty nine.
It occurred the epicenter was actually south of Newfoundland, so
it's well east of New England seven point two earthquake.
(13:26):
It was felt all throughout New England and it caused
a tsunami that actually killed probably twenty to thirty people
in southern Newfoundland. Ten foot wall of water came in
on shore there. That tsunami was small, but was noticed
in Nova Scotia, about a foot high there. It was
(13:48):
recorded on tide gages in Boston Harbor, although the wave
was so small there that it wasn't noticed by people.
But if you look at right along the edge of
what we call the continental shelf, where the ocean where
the continent ends and the ocean deepened to the very
very deep part of the Atlantic Ocean, there are earthquakes
(14:13):
actually all along that margin, from south of Newfoundland all
the way down to south of Long Island. And if
we had a magnitude let's say, seven earthquakes anywhere along
that stretch, it very likely would cause a tsunami that
would move on shore. And there's actually some geologic evidence
(14:33):
of a tsunami that probably came on shore about twenty
two hundred years ago in coastal New Hampshire. So tsunamis
are a possibility here, although very rare compared to what
they have in Indonesia and Alaskan places like that.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Amazing, Yeah, it is, truly, it's truly amazing. This is
a really dumb question, but are there any land masses
that exist, either in the ocean or anywhere that a
thought to be have been caused by an earthquake?
Speaker 3 (15:11):
So the land masses themselves are caused by basically the
lightest material earth materials throughout Earth history floating to the top.
So just as if you were to, you know, put
a bunch of a dig a bunch of dirt from
your backyard and put it in a bucket and put
water in it, the lightest materials like you know, wood
(15:33):
and grass and things like that would float to the top. Well,
the same thing happens over a much slower rate with
the rock, so you don't have earthquakes with that process.
But on the other hand, as the plates move to
as the material moves to the surface, they cool and
they form these hard plates, and the circulation of hot
(15:53):
material from the interior of the earth pushes those plates around,
and that's where those plates rubbed together that you have
most of the earthquakes. And so the Santa Dora's fault
is a place where two plates are rubbing together. In
California underneath Alaska, southern Alaska, you have Pacific Ocean plates
sliding under the North American plate there. So anytime you
(16:16):
have two plates rubbing together, you have earthquakes, and then
you have a few earthquakes. Only about probably ten percent
of the world's earthquakes occur within the centers of plates
because of the pressure that builds up as the plates
are moving around, so kindinal crust is not caused by
earthquakes or formed by earthquakes, but earthquakes occur at the
(16:40):
edges of the plates, including of many of the continents.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
All right, Jang, really good question. Thank you for joining
us tonight.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Thank you have a great night.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Guys, you too.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Thanks.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
All right, let me get one more in here if
I can, before the we get to the nine thirty
news in Connecticut. Rachel, you are on with Professor John Ebel.
Go right ahead, Rachel.
Speaker 6 (17:06):
Hello, mister Ebel. I have two questions. One, are you
familiar with the George's Bank? The water is above this
round under the water, and that there's like a shelf,
(17:26):
and would that affect.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Rachel. I think you have a phone on and you
have the radio one in the background, and I think
you're being distracted by it or is someone able to
turn the phone down. I think you're having a tough
time with the radio in the background. You're not supposed
to have that. You got it down, Okay, go ahead,
formulate your question again because I think that you'll you'll
do better without the radio of the background.
Speaker 7 (17:53):
Go ahead.
Speaker 6 (17:54):
There's a place called George's Bank, Busy Coast and I
was wondering what John Eball thought about that collapsing in
an earthquake and causing like a tsunami like the former
Calis mentioned.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Okay, that's interesting. He's already mentioned George's Bank. But let's
let's see what he has to say to that question.
That's an interesting question, Professor.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
So, George's Bank is the part of the edge of
the North American continent, and the continent at one time
had uh had earthquake activity associated with collisions and splitting
with pass plates. For instance, if you were here two
(18:40):
hundred million years ago, you could walk from Boston here
to Morocco because those two land masses were connected. So
George's Bank and actually most of the Boston area, the
rocks are more related to northern northwestern most Africa than
they are to the rest of North America. And so
any time you have plates colliding or you have then
(19:03):
plates splitting apart, you have faults forms. So there's very
likely faults beneath George's Bank and the rock beneath George's Bank,
just as there is probably all up and down the
East coast off shore. The tsunamis seem to be most
likely associated with where you go from the shallow water
(19:24):
to the deep ocean, because you have a lot of
sediments there and the earthquake shaking can trigger offshore slumps
in those sediments, so you don't see them at the surface,
but the sediment slump and that then causes the water
to readjust and that's what causes the tsunamis. In nineteen
twenty nine, there were actually there was a submarine slump
(19:46):
that broke a lot of telephone cables between North America
and Europe. And so that's how that slump actually got
mapped because of the cable breaks.
Speaker 6 (19:57):
So the next question I had is a few can
recall I had sent you a letter in twenty and
thirteen about a summer quake, and I was curious, if
you believe in God and if you believe that people
that are on the Earth can be affected by earthquakes
(20:18):
caused by God?
Speaker 3 (20:22):
So earthquakes caused by God, That's something that we had.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
A theological question here, not necessarily a seigebological question. Go ahead, professor.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
So my late friend father Jimskian would have been very
happy to deal with this question too, but I'm happy
to take it. So you know, God created the earth,
and the Earth is evolving all the time, and the
plates are moving, and as the plates move, there are earthquakes.
(20:54):
So in that sense, God causes earthquakes because it's part
of his natural creation. Does any particular earthquake is Did
God point to the ground at that point and say
there's going to be an earthquake there today? I personally
would not believe that because I just don't think that
that that's the way God acts. But earthquakes are a
(21:16):
natural part of our ecosystem, just as as hurricanes are, as,
snowstorms are as, as you know, meteors up in the
sky are and all that sort of thing. So I,
you know, now we're getting into theology. But I don't
think God is, you know, pointing to the earth and
say I'm going to cause an earthquake there today because
(21:36):
of whatever reason.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Rachel, I think that's a pretty good answer, Hope help.
Thank you so much, appreciate your call. Thank you. We
have a news break at the bottom of the hour
of Florence's next CG and Cambridge, Row and Newton. We
get them all in the only lines open right now
six one, seven, nine, three, ten thirty. I just think
it's it's it's an amazing field of study, and that's
(22:00):
why it fascinates me. I hope it fascinates you. If
you want to jump on, we'll get you on before
the ten o'clock news, and we will have to say
good bad good night to our professor. He's a professor
at Boston College, also the Western Observatory, Professor John Ebel.
We will be back on Nightside right after this.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
You're on night Side with Dan Ray. I'm w b Z,
Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
We're back to phone calls. My guest is, I'm doctor
John Ebel. He is a Boston College professor. He works
and has worked for many years at Boston College's Western Observatory.
I interviewed him for Channel four probably ten years more
than ten years ago, twenty years ago. Believe it or not,
I'm dating us, doctor. This is it's frightening when I
(22:49):
realize how long I've been doing radio after television. Florence
is in grovelin Florence. You are on with my guest,
doctor John Ebel.
Speaker 8 (22:56):
Go right ahead, yes, goody name, then good evening, professor, Professor.
I have two things I want to mention. The second
one's question. Okay, but The first thing I wanted to
mention about several years ago, might be six or seven,
(23:18):
we had I'm in the Merrimack Valley, so I'm close
to the New Hampshire border, and we had a quake
that menatured. They said four point zero okay, and everything
shook in our house. The chair in the living room
(23:39):
I was sitting in, all our ceiling fans were shaking. Bed.
You must recall that, yes, I do okay. And the
other thing, the question I wanted to ask some years back,
(24:00):
something I was watching on TV and a content was
named They were talking about earthquakes, and they said that
in New England, here we are sitting on one of
the largest faults in your studies. Have you ever heard
(24:23):
that mentioning or do you know what? That's a fact?
Speaker 2 (24:27):
If anybody's going to know, it's this, it's the gentleman
you're talking to, flounce, go right ahead, doctor.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
So people want to associate earthquakes with a single fault,
and that's really a misconception. It's a misconception in California,
it's a misconception in Japan, it's a misconception in China
and Turkey, anywhere in the world. There's actually many, many,
many different faults, and earthquakes in different places are associated
(24:59):
with with different faults or typically are associated with different faults.
So for example, I know, as we were talking about earlier,
I think that there probably is a fault and an
active fault offshore east of York, Maine and running down
to east of Cape ann But then we have earthquakes,
(25:21):
for instance, in the newberry Port area, and going back
to a pretty strong earthquake that did damage in seventeen
twenty seven, that would be associated with a different fault.
There have been earthquakes down along the south coast of
Massachusetts those would be associated with different faults. Earthquakes that
(25:43):
Moodus Connecticut, different fault there. So there's no one single
fault And that's what makes my research so challenging because
there's just there's so many earthquakes in so many different places,
and there's so many different possible faults that we have
to study. So it's really like a huge puzzle and
we don't even have all the puzzle pieces.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
All right, hope that answer the question, Florence welcome, profess.
Speaker 8 (26:10):
That kind of rattled me to hear that comment years ago,
and always wanted to know was a fact.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yep, all right, Thanks Thanks Florence, talk to you soon.
Appreciate your question. Let me go next to CJ in Cambridge. CJ,
you were next on NIGHTSYB professor with Professor John Evil.
Go right ahead, c.
Speaker 9 (26:31):
J, Jean Ray, and thank you to Evil. What I'm
concerned about is I live on a hills that's three
hundred and forty feet above sea level. That's where my
house sits, and I didn't feel that earthquake at all.
Are they more likely to be under the water or
can they go right through hills and mountains the falls
(26:55):
The earthquake releases vibrational waves, and that's what we feel
as the earthquake shaking. I was at Western Observatory Monday
morning when this earthquake occurred.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
I did not feel it. And when there have been
other earthquakes felt in the Boston area when I've been
at Western Observatory, I don't feel those either. And if
you're in Cambridge and you're up high, I can understand
why you did not feel the earthquake. So let me
give you a little, a little one minute thumbnail about
who tends to feel earthquakes. Heart Rock shakes, but it
(27:32):
shakes just as with the waves, and it doesn't shake
more strongly. It actually kind of shakes a little bit
less strongly than areas around the Areas that shake most
strongly are areas where you have thick soft soils. So
where do you have thick soft soils. You have them
in river bottom areas, So for instance, if you're along
(27:53):
the Charles River, you will feel shaking more strongly than
if you're up higher in Cambridge. If you're in a
floodplain like the Sudbury River floodplain, you will feel the
earthquakes more strongly. Landfill amplifies ground shaking also, so people
who are in low lying areas, usually near water bodies
(28:14):
where you have thick sediments, they tend to feel amplified
ground shaking. So, as I said, I don't feel the earthquakes.
So in twenty eleven, there was an earthquake down in Virginia,
actually a five point nine that I was at Western Observatory.
I didn't feel it, but within a minute or so
I was looking at the seismograph and watching the thing
just going back and forth like crazy. We got to
(28:37):
call at Western Observatory about a hospital that was in
Beverly maybe or someplace like that where they were evacuating
the hospital because the building shook so strongly, and that
hospital was built on soft soils where the ground shaking
was amplified. So where you are and what the ground
(29:00):
conditions are can determine whether you feel lots of shaking,
little shaking, or perhaps no shaking at all.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Great question, CJ. Hope that answers it for you.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Thank you very good, Thank you, goody.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Talk to you soon, and we have more callers coming
in and we're going to get more calls. Professor, you
lit the lines up tonight. A lot of interest in this,
and I'm delighted. We'll be back on Nightside with my guest,
Boston College professor seismiologist, Professor John Ebel, back on Nightside
right after this.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
nights Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Let's go to Ron and Ron appreciate you waiting your patience.
Speaker 10 (29:42):
You're next on Nightside, Hie, I, Dan, thank you very
much for having this son. Professor, I haven't experienced. I
was fortunate to be a part of a response to
the bam Iran earthquake day after Christmas in two thousand
and three, it was a six point six, resulting in
(30:05):
about a thirty four or thirty five thousand deaths two
hundred thousand injured. Supposedly, it was a slowing velocity until
it ultimately fractured at the at the epicenter where we
(30:26):
could actually see it as we landed. I'm curious that
the two things the city was in historic city, that
buildings were comprised mostly of Adobe brick mud. The interesting
thing was it was all crumbled except for the mosque.
(30:48):
The mosque was curious. And I don't know whether it's
the function of the design and materials. Certainly it should
involve physics and architecture, but it almost looked untouched. And
I don't know whether it was because of the double
dome design, but it caused me to think about you know,
(31:14):
I'm sure that they have different construction codes, perhaps in California,
given the number of earthquakes they have. Let me drive
you to your question, wrong, what will it should we
adopt different codes.
Speaker 9 (31:31):
In general?
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Building codes? Yeah, so let's talk about building codes for
a second. And and that bomb earthquake in Iran was
was just you know, heartrending. Adobe is just horrible. It
will not shake at all. As soon as it starts shaking,
it cracks and collapses. It's a heavy structure, so anyone
(31:53):
within the structure will suffer. You're right about the mosque
the the I don't know what kind of materials they
would have used for the mosque, but probably not adobe brick.
I'll bet it was built of more competent stone. But
the form of the mosque with a domed ceiling would
tend to protect it some from collapse. In the United States,
(32:17):
since the nineteen seventies, there have been seismic provisions in
the building codes in various places. In Massachusetts were one
of the first to adopt the sizement provision in nineteen
seventy five because of the foresight of some engineering professors
over the MIT, and since then FEMA has been getting
(32:38):
all of the states to put seismic provisions in their
building coats. We have a couple lucky things. First of all,
our houses tend to be made of wood. Wood frame
can bend an earthquake shaking, so it tends not to
collapse unless you have a problem with the foundation or
termite damage or something. So that's one advantage. Our roofs
(32:58):
are not real heavy Japan. They tend to have very
heavy tile roofs and that can be a problem. Where
we do take damage is in masonry buildings, So for instance,
brick buildings or center block buildings will not do well
in earthquakes. For the typical home, the chimney will be
the thing that will that will take the damage. But
(33:19):
any modern building that's put up is built to withstand earthquakes.
When the Kanti Forum at Boston College was built, I
actually had one of the senior officials of Boston College
come to me and said, he said, to me, you
cost me money. I said, what are you talking about.
He says, we had to put extra steel into the
(33:40):
Kanti Forum if for earthquake safety. And all I could
say was, well, I'm glad you did, because if I'm
in that building, I don't want it to come down
if there's earthquakes. So we do have we do have
earthquake We do have earthquake provisions in our building codes,
and they're actually being improved all the time.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Ron Greg I got a bunch of calls. I got
to get to my friend. I owe you a phone call.
Thank you, buddy, talk to you thank you, good night.
We're going to try to get everyone in here. We'll
see what we can do. Jack down of the Cape
great response to night to call as professor Jack on
Cape cod go right ahead.
Speaker 7 (34:15):
Well, I I, having grown up in southern California, I
felt that quake. I kind of didn't register until I
heard it on the news and so forth, but I
kind of had a then kind of perked my mind.
I said, was that an earthquake? And didn't think about it,
but anyway, I did feel it. But the professor kind
(34:37):
of going into a different direction, what do you what
is your thoughts on the Pangaea uh super continent and
following up on that, what are your thoughts on the
expanding Earth theory?
Speaker 3 (34:56):
So Pangea definitely existed. It was a little over two
hundred million years ago where all the continents came together
and we're really all smashed together on one part of
the planet. And there were actually earlier times when super
continents had formed, at least from what we can map
out from deciphering the early tectonics of the Earth. So
(35:21):
that definitely happens. Why the contents come together and then
split apart is actually something of a very interesting debate
among seismo, among geoscientists in general, the expanding Earth theory.
The Earth is not expanding. The Earth is a solid ball.
Gravity really holds it in place, so it doesn't get
(35:42):
it doesn't get bigger. But what's happening is over time,
the heat that's stored within the Earth is coming out,
and that's pushing the tectonic plates. That's giving us our volcanoes,
and that's what's making us a very active planet and
does things like, for instance, creates hydro thermal events that
concentrate minerals that are used for you know, all kinds
(36:04):
of processes these days in industrial situations. So the fact
that we live on an active planet is probably a
great boon to helping life on Earth and human beings
evolve into the forms that we have today. Superat question.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Thank you, Thanks, Jack, appreciate it. Unless I get at
least one more, and we'll give a shot. George and
new Bedford you're next one. Nice, I go ahead, George.
Speaker 5 (36:29):
All right. I tuned in late, so I don't know
if you covered this already, but six years ago I
heard a geology report that predicted within ten years, which
is rapidly coming. There would be a mid Atlantic major
earthquake which would create tsunamis the boat for Europe and
the United States, and certainly things like wind generators would
(36:54):
be wiped out. Is that still an accurate prediction.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
It's not in the middle of the Atlantic. I think
what you're talking about is the volcanic islands down off
of Africa, the Azors. Those islands, UH have some unstable
side to them that if they were to slump into
the ocean very very quickly in a major landslide, that
(37:20):
would cause a tsunami that would spread all throughout the
Atlantic Ocean.
Speaker 5 (37:25):
This was at least stated earthquake, an Atlantic earth quick
All right, well ad slide.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Yeah, all right, Well, George, we're flat out of time.
I wish I wish you'd called earlier. I apologize to
the callers in the line. I also apologize and wish
your guys had called earlier. Professor Ebel, this has been
a great hour. I'm surprised and gratified that the amount
of interest that people have in this issue. And maybe
a couple of months from now we'll try to get
(37:54):
you to come back and follow up the conversation. Thank
you so much for your time. Tonight, and particularly in
the middle of a very long week for.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
You, I'd be happy to talk to you again.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Thank you so much, Professor John Evil of Boston College
and also the Western Observatory when we get back on
to talk about Robert Kennedy Junior's difficult day at the
US Senate in Washington,
It's Night Side with Dan Ray. I'm Bzy Boston's radio.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
All right, we had a big shake, big shake off
the coast of Maine on Monday morning. We talked about
it Monday night. I think it was Monday night. Yeah,
I guess it was. Just the week goes by very quickly.
And then today, as our guest on Monday Night suggested,
(00:26):
we had an aftershock. So we brought our guests from
Monday Night back. Professor John Ebel. He is a research
scientist at Boston College's Western Observatory who studies earthquakes. Professor Ebel,
welcome back to Nightside. How are you.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I'm doing very well. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
How does someone begin? When did you realize you were
going to have a career studying earthquakes?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Well, I was an undergrade you it, majoring in physics
at Harvard School. You may have heard of.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
And is that one of the that's one of those
schools across the river from Boston College, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yeah, it's another liberal, large college in the area.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
It's called the Boston College of Cambridge, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
And that's the way I like to think of it. Anyway. Anyway,
I was. I was a physics major, and at the
time when I was studying physics, the the the big
thing was high energy particle physics, you know, looking for
smash while smashing the atom and looking for sub atomic particles.
And while I thought that that was interesting, the geophysicists
(01:40):
at at Harvard University tried to get the physics students
interested in geophysics, and I went and took some courses
from them and talked to the faculty there and really
got interested in it. And a professor there, Rick O'Connell,
who is now unfortunately passed on and couraged me to
(02:01):
think about cal Tech. And when I looked at all
the different geophysics that they had, I thought seismology, earthquake
schismology was the most interesting, and so I applied and
I got in, and so I cut my seismological teeth
on earthquakes in California, and the rest is history.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
I guess, well, great place to cut your seismological teeth,
that's for sure, and also another fabulous school. So I guess,
let me start with some basic questions, because I know
my audience out there wants to ask questions, and some
of them probably aren't that they're a little apprehensive about calling,
(02:39):
and I hope people will join the conversation. How far
back are we able to trace earthquakes? I assume earthquakes
have existed since the Earth was created billions of years ago. Correct.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Absolutely. What an earthquake is is a place where the
pressure in the rock has built up to the point
where the rock cracks and slides to try to relieve
that pressure. And rock, unlike skin, doesn't heal. So if
the rock crack a billion years ago, geologists can still
(03:19):
find that crack in the earth today, and when they
map it, they map it it's a fault, and that fault, then,
you know, goes onto maps as lines. People like to
call them fault lines, although they're really surfaces in the earth.
And if you look at for instance, New England, you
can't actually drive more than a few miles anywhere in
(03:40):
New England without crossing an old fault, So faults are everywhere.
What's interesting for me as a seismologist is to try
to figure out which are the modern active faults. And
there's two possibilities there. One is that it's an old
fault that is moving again in the modern stress or
(04:02):
pressure field of the moving plates. Or the second possibility
is that the rock cracks in a brand new spot
and the crack runs in a different direction, and so
you have the creation of a new fault. And everyone
just assumes that if you have an earthquake, you have
to have a fault. Well after the earthquake, yeah, because
the rock crack, But before the earthquake, maybe there wasn't
a crack running in that direction. Just as if you
(04:25):
have a crack in your windshield of your car and
the crack runs in one direction and then you get
hit by another rock, you can have a new crack
run in a different direction.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
How do you chart that? I mean, this earthquake on
Monday was under the Atlantic Ocean. Most earthquakes, obviously by definition,
are underground. How can you chart that? How's it physically?
How are you physically able to do that?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Well, you have to be patient. What you have to
do is you have to monitor earthquakes for a very,
very very long period of time. So instruments for earthquake
monitoring were invented in the eighteen eighties, although there were
some earlier instruments that were more primitive, but eighteen eighties
(05:11):
is really when earthquake modern earthquake recording started and the
kind of seismic networks we have today where data is
transmitted over the Internet and so I can get data
from anywhere in the world at Western Observatory, that really
started in the nineteen sixties and into the nineteen seventies.
So since that time period, seismologists have put out as
(05:34):
many seismic instruments as they can in all parts of
the world, and then we collect the data. We use
the data to locate the earthquakes, and what we do
is we look for patterns, spatial patterns in the way
the earthquakes line up over the time period for which
we have data. So in California they get so many
(05:54):
earthquakes that even within a few years, you see the
earthquakes lining up on many of the heck defaults out there. Here.
Because we have many fewer earthquakes in any given year,
we have to wait much longer to see the earthquakes
line up on what potentially may be act defaults. And
that's one of the important areas of my research and
why an earthquake are actually the pair of earthquakes that
(06:16):
happened today and Monday are so interesting because I look
for them to line up with other earthquakes and hopefully
then use that identify where possible act defaults may be.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
So you're trying to say, Okay, the earthquake was, what
was it twenty miles off York Maine or approximately? Are
they able to isolate with some proximity where the earthquake
began right right?
Speaker 3 (06:42):
So we can isolate it offshore. We can isolate it
within about probably two miles the epicenter. But if you
were to look at the map of earthquakes since the
mid nineteen seventies, when we started having good earthquake monitoring here,
you would see that there would be a couple dozen
earthquakes off shore of York, Maine, and then offshore New Hampshire,
(07:05):
and even going down as far south as as offshore
east of Cape Ann. So there's a cluster of earthquakes
out there. And I've been studying those earthquakes, and now
I have a couple more data points to see if
they might be telling us of a possible active fault
in the rock underneath the underneath in this case the
(07:26):
Gulf of Maine that maybe gave us, for instance, the
big earthquake that we had in seventeen fifty five the
so called cape an earthquake.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
So the information that you're trying to plot, is it
prospective or retrospective.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
It's retrospective. We cannot predict. So what I like to
explain to people about what we're trying to do is
if you were to go into a movie and you
were to watch let's say one minute of the movie.
All right, so you watch one minute of this movie,
and then you're trying to guess the plot. You're trying
(08:06):
to guess the main characters. You're trying to guess what
happened in the past and what will happen in the
in the rest of the movie, in the future of
the movie. Well, that's kind of where we are right
now with earthquake monitoring, because the earthquake patterns play out
probably over many hundreds to thousands of years, and we
have really good data for about, you know, fifty years
(08:27):
here in New England right now. So it's like watching
one minute of the movie and trying to guess what
the whole what the whole movie is all about.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Well, I have more questions, and my guest is Professor
John Ebel. He is at Boston College, a seismologist studies earthquakes.
I think it's fascinating to think that that you're studying
something which is it's not abstract, but it's not something
that can be seen the nake by the naked eye,
(08:56):
and yet you're able to gather information. And of course
this has been going on for time, immemoriam, and I'd
love to know what people five thousand or ten thousand
years ago thought when the earth moved. I don't know
if there's any sort of records. I got a million questions,
and if you'd like to join the conversation, we'll be
happy to go to phone calls as well. I appreciate
(09:17):
the fact that Professor Evil, who's with us tonight, he
has had a very busy week. I would bet you
that you probably have done more than a few interviews
this week. Am I correct?
Speaker 3 (09:28):
You are correct, indeed, and not just in the Boston area,
but up in Maine as well.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Oh, I will bet, I will bet. We'll take a
quick break six one seven, two, five, four ten thirty
or six one seven, nine three ten thirty. Again. I
am in the business of asking questions and learning, and
that's what excites me about this interview. I hope that
It's what excites me about every interview that I do.
I hope this is of interest to you because this
is not a new phenomenon. It's been around, as I say,
(09:56):
as long as as as I guess man has recorded
it in some form of fashion movie. Back on the
night Side with my guest right after this.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
We've got a bunch of phone calls. We're going to
get to phone calls, but I just want to ask
one more sort of I would say, fundamental maybe threshold question.
Do we know obviously earthquakes must have been going on
since time in Memoriam, but are the writings hieroglyphics? You
(10:37):
know that we can say earth in fact earthquakes occurred
ten thousand years ago. I mean, we know, we must
intellectually know that they had to have been occurring, But
one of the are they recorded and obviously not like
what you record? But is there any any what's the
earliest writings about earthquakes?
Speaker 3 (10:58):
There's lots and lots of evidence of past earthquakes going
through historic time, prehistoric time, and even before that. So
let's talk about the historic record. First, there's a lot
of good historical evidence of strong earthquakes going right back
(11:19):
to the time when the Pilgrims first landed. In fact,
even before that, when European explorers were still looking you know,
we're still landing on the North American continent and looking
at them. I have a book I published a few
years ago about earthquakes in New England. Just it's available
to the general public on Amazon, and I go through
(11:43):
the history of earthquakes, starting with the first one that
the Pilgrims felt, which was in sixteen thirty eight, which
actually was quite a strong shake, and go through earthquakes
after that seventeen fifty five, go right up to the
present and the earthquake in nineteen eighty eight. But what
we know is all of the Native American tribes here
(12:04):
in the northeastern part of North America had a word
for earthquake in their languages. And you only have a
word if there's some reason for it.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, fascinating, just fascinating. Let's go to somep phone calls,
let's see want to ask and again I get more
excited about doing an hour like this than doing an
hour on politics. Let me start it off with Jen
in Burlington. Jen, thanks for calling in. You'll have professor
John Ebel abel Ebel, I'm sorry, sir, go right ahead, Jen.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
Hi, thanks for taking my call. So my understanding. My
understanding is that offshore earthquakes often times cause tsunamis like
the gigantic Boxing Day one sounds like more often in
Asia than around here. What an earthquake in the Gulf
of Maine ever have the ability to cause a tsunami
(13:03):
in this area.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Yes, indeed. So let's talk a little bit about the
history of tsunamis in the Atlantic. The most important earthquake
for US was one that occurred in nineteen twenty nine.
It occurred the epicenter was actually south of Newfoundland, so
it's well east of New England seven point two earthquake.
(13:26):
It was felt all throughout New England and it caused
a tsunami that actually killed probably twenty to thirty people
in southern Newfoundland. Ten foot wall of water came in
on shore there. That tsunami was small, but was noticed
in Nova Scotia, about a foot high there. It was
(13:48):
recorded on tide gages in Boston Harbor, although the wave
was so small there that it wasn't noticed by people.
But if you look at right along the edge of
what we call the continental shelf, where the ocean where
the continent ends and the ocean deepened to the very
very deep part of the Atlantic Ocean, there are earthquakes
(14:13):
actually all along that margin, from south of Newfoundland all
the way down to south of Long Island. And if
we had a magnitude let's say, seven earthquakes anywhere along
that stretch, it very likely would cause a tsunami that
would move on shore. And there's actually some geologic evidence
(14:33):
of a tsunami that probably came on shore about twenty
two hundred years ago in coastal New Hampshire. So tsunamis
are a possibility here, although very rare compared to what
they have in Indonesia and Alaskan places like that.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Amazing, Yeah, it is, truly, it's truly amazing. This is
a really dumb question, but are there any land masses
that exist, either in the ocean or anywhere that a
thought to be have been caused by an earthquake?
Speaker 3 (15:11):
So the land masses themselves are caused by basically the
lightest material earth materials throughout Earth history floating to the top.
So just as if you were to, you know, put
a bunch of a dig a bunch of dirt from
your backyard and put it in a bucket and put
water in it, the lightest materials like you know, wood
(15:33):
and grass and things like that would float to the top. Well,
the same thing happens over a much slower rate with
the rock, so you don't have earthquakes with that process.
But on the other hand, as the plates move to
as the material moves to the surface, they cool and
they form these hard plates, and the circulation of hot
(15:53):
material from the interior of the earth pushes those plates around,
and that's where those plates rubbed together that you have
most of the earthquakes. And so the Santa Dora's fault
is a place where two plates are rubbing together. In
California underneath Alaska, southern Alaska, you have Pacific Ocean plates
sliding under the North American plate there. So anytime you
(16:16):
have two plates rubbing together, you have earthquakes, and then
you have a few earthquakes. Only about probably ten percent
of the world's earthquakes occur within the centers of plates
because of the pressure that builds up as the plates
are moving around, so kindinal crust is not caused by
earthquakes or formed by earthquakes, but earthquakes occur at the
(16:40):
edges of the plates, including of many of the continents.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
All right, Jang, really good question. Thank you for joining
us tonight.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Thank you have a great night.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Guys, you too.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Thanks.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
All right, let me get one more in here if
I can, before the we get to the nine thirty
news in Connecticut. Rachel, you are on with Professor John Ebel.
Go right ahead, Rachel.
Speaker 6 (17:06):
Hello, mister Ebel. I have two questions. One, are you
familiar with the George's Bank? The water is above this
round under the water, and that there's like a shelf,
(17:26):
and would that affect.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Rachel. I think you have a phone on and you
have the radio one in the background, and I think
you're being distracted by it or is someone able to
turn the phone down. I think you're having a tough
time with the radio in the background. You're not supposed
to have that. You got it down, Okay, go ahead,
formulate your question again because I think that you'll you'll
do better without the radio of the background.
Speaker 7 (17:53):
Go ahead.
Speaker 6 (17:54):
There's a place called George's Bank, Busy Coast and I
was wondering what John Eball thought about that collapsing in
an earthquake and causing like a tsunami like the former
Calis mentioned.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Okay, that's interesting. He's already mentioned George's Bank. But let's
let's see what he has to say to that question.
That's an interesting question, Professor.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
So, George's Bank is the part of the edge of
the North American continent, and the continent at one time
had uh had earthquake activity associated with collisions and splitting
with pass plates. For instance, if you were here two
(18:40):
hundred million years ago, you could walk from Boston here
to Morocco because those two land masses were connected. So
George's Bank and actually most of the Boston area, the
rocks are more related to northern northwestern most Africa than
they are to the rest of North America. And so
any time you have plates colliding or you have then
(19:03):
plates splitting apart, you have faults forms. So there's very
likely faults beneath George's Bank and the rock beneath George's Bank,
just as there is probably all up and down the
East coast off shore. The tsunamis seem to be most
likely associated with where you go from the shallow water
(19:24):
to the deep ocean, because you have a lot of
sediments there and the earthquake shaking can trigger offshore slumps
in those sediments, so you don't see them at the surface,
but the sediment slump and that then causes the water
to readjust and that's what causes the tsunamis. In nineteen
twenty nine, there were actually there was a submarine slump
(19:46):
that broke a lot of telephone cables between North America
and Europe. And so that's how that slump actually got
mapped because of the cable breaks.
Speaker 6 (19:57):
So the next question I had is a few can
recall I had sent you a letter in twenty and
thirteen about a summer quake, and I was curious, if
you believe in God and if you believe that people
that are on the Earth can be affected by earthquakes
(20:18):
caused by God?
Speaker 3 (20:22):
So earthquakes caused by God, That's something that we had.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
A theological question here, not necessarily a seigebological question. Go ahead, professor.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
So my late friend father Jimskian would have been very
happy to deal with this question too, but I'm happy
to take it. So you know, God created the earth,
and the Earth is evolving all the time, and the
plates are moving, and as the plates move, there are earthquakes.
(20:54):
So in that sense, God causes earthquakes because it's part
of his natural creation. Does any particular earthquake is Did
God point to the ground at that point and say
there's going to be an earthquake there today? I personally
would not believe that because I just don't think that
that that's the way God acts. But earthquakes are a
(21:16):
natural part of our ecosystem, just as as hurricanes are, as,
snowstorms are as, as you know, meteors up in the
sky are and all that sort of thing. So I,
you know, now we're getting into theology. But I don't
think God is, you know, pointing to the earth and
say I'm going to cause an earthquake there today because
(21:36):
of whatever reason.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Rachel, I think that's a pretty good answer, Hope help.
Thank you so much, appreciate your call. Thank you. We
have a news break at the bottom of the hour
of Florence's next CG and Cambridge, Row and Newton. We
get them all in the only lines open right now
six one, seven, nine, three, ten thirty. I just think
it's it's it's an amazing field of study, and that's
(22:00):
why it fascinates me. I hope it fascinates you. If
you want to jump on, we'll get you on before
the ten o'clock news, and we will have to say
good bad good night to our professor. He's a professor
at Boston College, also the Western Observatory, Professor John Ebel.
We will be back on Nightside right after this.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
You're on night Side with Dan Ray. I'm w b Z,
Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
We're back to phone calls. My guest is, I'm doctor
John Ebel. He is a Boston College professor. He works
and has worked for many years at Boston College's Western Observatory.
I interviewed him for Channel four probably ten years more
than ten years ago, twenty years ago. Believe it or not,
I'm dating us, doctor. This is it's frightening when I
(22:49):
realize how long I've been doing radio after television. Florence
is in grovelin Florence. You are on with my guest,
doctor John Ebel.
Speaker 8 (22:56):
Go right ahead, yes, goody name, then good evening, professor, Professor.
I have two things I want to mention. The second
one's question. Okay, but The first thing I wanted to
mention about several years ago, might be six or seven,
(23:18):
we had I'm in the Merrimack Valley, so I'm close
to the New Hampshire border, and we had a quake
that menatured. They said four point zero okay, and everything
shook in our house. The chair in the living room
(23:39):
I was sitting in, all our ceiling fans were shaking. Bed.
You must recall that, yes, I do okay. And the
other thing, the question I wanted to ask some years back,
(24:00):
something I was watching on TV and a content was
named They were talking about earthquakes, and they said that
in New England, here we are sitting on one of
the largest faults in your studies. Have you ever heard
(24:23):
that mentioning or do you know what? That's a fact?
Speaker 2 (24:27):
If anybody's going to know, it's this, it's the gentleman
you're talking to, flounce, go right ahead, doctor.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
So people want to associate earthquakes with a single fault,
and that's really a misconception. It's a misconception in California,
it's a misconception in Japan, it's a misconception in China
and Turkey, anywhere in the world. There's actually many, many,
many different faults, and earthquakes in different places are associated
(24:59):
with with different faults or typically are associated with different faults.
So for example, I know, as we were talking about earlier,
I think that there probably is a fault and an
active fault offshore east of York, Maine and running down
to east of Cape ann But then we have earthquakes,
(25:21):
for instance, in the newberry Port area, and going back
to a pretty strong earthquake that did damage in seventeen
twenty seven, that would be associated with a different fault.
There have been earthquakes down along the south coast of
Massachusetts those would be associated with different faults. Earthquakes that
(25:43):
Moodus Connecticut, different fault there. So there's no one single
fault And that's what makes my research so challenging because
there's just there's so many earthquakes in so many different places,
and there's so many different possible faults that we have
to study. So it's really like a huge puzzle and
we don't even have all the puzzle pieces.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
All right, hope that answer the question, Florence welcome, profess.
Speaker 8 (26:10):
That kind of rattled me to hear that comment years ago,
and always wanted to know was a fact.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yep, all right, Thanks Thanks Florence, talk to you soon.
Appreciate your question. Let me go next to CJ in Cambridge. CJ,
you were next on NIGHTSYB professor with Professor John Evil.
Go right ahead, c.
Speaker 9 (26:31):
J, Jean Ray, and thank you to Evil. What I'm
concerned about is I live on a hills that's three
hundred and forty feet above sea level. That's where my
house sits, and I didn't feel that earthquake at all.
Are they more likely to be under the water or
can they go right through hills and mountains the falls
(26:55):
The earthquake releases vibrational waves, and that's what we feel
as the earthquake shaking. I was at Western Observatory Monday
morning when this earthquake occurred.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
I did not feel it. And when there have been
other earthquakes felt in the Boston area when I've been
at Western Observatory, I don't feel those either. And if
you're in Cambridge and you're up high, I can understand
why you did not feel the earthquake. So let me
give you a little, a little one minute thumbnail about
who tends to feel earthquakes. Heart Rock shakes, but it
(27:32):
shakes just as with the waves, and it doesn't shake
more strongly. It actually kind of shakes a little bit
less strongly than areas around the Areas that shake most
strongly are areas where you have thick soft soils. So
where do you have thick soft soils. You have them
in river bottom areas, So for instance, if you're along
(27:53):
the Charles River, you will feel shaking more strongly than
if you're up higher in Cambridge. If you're in a
floodplain like the Sudbury River floodplain, you will feel the
earthquakes more strongly. Landfill amplifies ground shaking also, so people
who are in low lying areas, usually near water bodies
(28:14):
where you have thick sediments, they tend to feel amplified
ground shaking. So, as I said, I don't feel the earthquakes.
So in twenty eleven, there was an earthquake down in Virginia,
actually a five point nine that I was at Western Observatory.
I didn't feel it, but within a minute or so
I was looking at the seismograph and watching the thing
just going back and forth like crazy. We got to
(28:37):
call at Western Observatory about a hospital that was in
Beverly maybe or someplace like that where they were evacuating
the hospital because the building shook so strongly, and that
hospital was built on soft soils where the ground shaking
was amplified. So where you are and what the ground
(29:00):
conditions are can determine whether you feel lots of shaking,
little shaking, or perhaps no shaking at all.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Great question, CJ. Hope that answers it for you.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Thank you very good, Thank you, goody.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Talk to you soon, and we have more callers coming
in and we're going to get more calls. Professor, you
lit the lines up tonight. A lot of interest in this,
and I'm delighted. We'll be back on Nightside with my guest,
Boston College professor seismiologist, Professor John Ebel, back on Nightside
right after this.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
nights Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Let's go to Ron and Ron appreciate you waiting your patience.
Speaker 10 (29:42):
You're next on Nightside, Hie, I, Dan, thank you very
much for having this son. Professor, I haven't experienced. I
was fortunate to be a part of a response to
the bam Iran earthquake day after Christmas in two thousand
and three, it was a six point six, resulting in
(30:05):
about a thirty four or thirty five thousand deaths two
hundred thousand injured. Supposedly, it was a slowing velocity until
it ultimately fractured at the at the epicenter where we
(30:26):
could actually see it as we landed. I'm curious that
the two things the city was in historic city, that
buildings were comprised mostly of Adobe brick mud. The interesting
thing was it was all crumbled except for the mosque.
(30:48):
The mosque was curious. And I don't know whether it's
the function of the design and materials. Certainly it should
involve physics and architecture, but it almost looked untouched. And
I don't know whether it was because of the double
dome design, but it caused me to think about you know,
(31:14):
I'm sure that they have different construction codes, perhaps in California,
given the number of earthquakes they have. Let me drive
you to your question, wrong, what will it should we
adopt different codes.
Speaker 9 (31:31):
In general?
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Building codes? Yeah, so let's talk about building codes for
a second. And and that bomb earthquake in Iran was
was just you know, heartrending. Adobe is just horrible. It
will not shake at all. As soon as it starts shaking,
it cracks and collapses. It's a heavy structure, so anyone
(31:53):
within the structure will suffer. You're right about the mosque
the the I don't know what kind of materials they
would have used for the mosque, but probably not adobe brick.
I'll bet it was built of more competent stone. But
the form of the mosque with a domed ceiling would
tend to protect it some from collapse. In the United States,
(32:17):
since the nineteen seventies, there have been seismic provisions in
the building codes in various places. In Massachusetts were one
of the first to adopt the sizement provision in nineteen
seventy five because of the foresight of some engineering professors
over the MIT, and since then FEMA has been getting
(32:38):
all of the states to put seismic provisions in their
building coats. We have a couple lucky things. First of all,
our houses tend to be made of wood. Wood frame
can bend an earthquake shaking, so it tends not to
collapse unless you have a problem with the foundation or
termite damage or something. So that's one advantage. Our roofs
(32:58):
are not real heavy Japan. They tend to have very
heavy tile roofs and that can be a problem. Where
we do take damage is in masonry buildings, So for instance,
brick buildings or center block buildings will not do well
in earthquakes. For the typical home, the chimney will be
the thing that will that will take the damage. But
(33:19):
any modern building that's put up is built to withstand earthquakes.
When the Kanti Forum at Boston College was built, I
actually had one of the senior officials of Boston College
come to me and said, he said, to me, you
cost me money. I said, what are you talking about.
He says, we had to put extra steel into the
(33:40):
Kanti Forum if for earthquake safety. And all I could
say was, well, I'm glad you did, because if I'm
in that building, I don't want it to come down
if there's earthquakes. So we do have we do have
earthquake We do have earthquake provisions in our building codes,
and they're actually being improved all the time.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Ron Greg I got a bunch of calls. I got
to get to my friend. I owe you a phone call.
Thank you, buddy, talk to you thank you, good night.
We're going to try to get everyone in here. We'll
see what we can do. Jack down of the Cape
great response to night to call as professor Jack on
Cape cod go right ahead.
Speaker 7 (34:15):
Well, I I, having grown up in southern California, I
felt that quake. I kind of didn't register until I
heard it on the news and so forth, but I
kind of had a then kind of perked my mind.
I said, was that an earthquake? And didn't think about it,
but anyway, I did feel it. But the professor kind
(34:37):
of going into a different direction, what do you what
is your thoughts on the Pangaea uh super continent and
following up on that, what are your thoughts on the
expanding Earth theory?
Speaker 3 (34:56):
So Pangea definitely existed. It was a little over two
hundred million years ago where all the continents came together
and we're really all smashed together on one part of
the planet. And there were actually earlier times when super
continents had formed, at least from what we can map
out from deciphering the early tectonics of the Earth. So
(35:21):
that definitely happens. Why the contents come together and then
split apart is actually something of a very interesting debate
among seismo, among geoscientists in general, the expanding Earth theory.
The Earth is not expanding. The Earth is a solid ball.
Gravity really holds it in place, so it doesn't get
(35:42):
it doesn't get bigger. But what's happening is over time,
the heat that's stored within the Earth is coming out,
and that's pushing the tectonic plates. That's giving us our volcanoes,
and that's what's making us a very active planet and
does things like, for instance, creates hydro thermal events that
concentrate minerals that are used for you know, all kinds
(36:04):
of processes these days in industrial situations. So the fact
that we live on an active planet is probably a
great boon to helping life on Earth and human beings
evolve into the forms that we have today. Superat question.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Thank you, Thanks, Jack, appreciate it. Unless I get at
least one more, and we'll give a shot. George and
new Bedford you're next one. Nice, I go ahead, George.
Speaker 5 (36:29):
All right. I tuned in late, so I don't know
if you covered this already, but six years ago I
heard a geology report that predicted within ten years, which
is rapidly coming. There would be a mid Atlantic major
earthquake which would create tsunamis the boat for Europe and
the United States, and certainly things like wind generators would
(36:54):
be wiped out. Is that still an accurate prediction.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
It's not in the middle of the Atlantic. I think
what you're talking about is the volcanic islands down off
of Africa, the Azors. Those islands, UH have some unstable
side to them that if they were to slump into
the ocean very very quickly in a major landslide, that
(37:20):
would cause a tsunami that would spread all throughout the
Atlantic Ocean.
Speaker 5 (37:25):
This was at least stated earthquake, an Atlantic earth quick
All right, well ad slide.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Yeah, all right, Well, George, we're flat out of time.
I wish I wish you'd called earlier. I apologize to
the callers in the line. I also apologize and wish
your guys had called earlier. Professor Ebel, this has been
a great hour. I'm surprised and gratified that the amount
of interest that people have in this issue. And maybe
a couple of months from now we'll try to get
(37:54):
you to come back and follow up the conversation. Thank
you so much for your time. Tonight, and particularly in
the middle of a very long week for.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
You, I'd be happy to talk to you again.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Thank you so much, Professor John Evil of Boston College
and also the Western Observatory when we get back on
to talk about Robert Kennedy Junior's difficult day at the
US Senate in Washington,
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