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Around 90% of an Earthquake’s Energy Doesn’t Do What You Think It Does

Earthquakes can be deadly and disastrous. But what we feel may constitute a tiny sliver of an earthquake’s destructive energy, according to a new experiment. In a recent AGU Advances paper, researchers describe how they created “lab quakes,” or miniature versions of natural earthquakes created in a controlled laboratory. Doing so allowed the team to derive a complete energy budget for the quakes, a “simplified analog” of real-life earthquakes, they reported in the paper. Surprisingly, they fou

Google Has Quietly Been Detecting Earthquakes by Sensing Rumbling in Android Phones For Years

Google has for years been harnessing the power of its Android smartphones to detect and measure tens of thousands of earthquakes. In a new paper published in the journal Science, researchers from the search giant described how they used motion sensors from its two billion-strong network of phones running Android between the years 2021 and 2024 to detect and alert quakes to users in almost 100 countries around the world. Known as "Android Earthquake Alerts" (AEA), this early warning system has

‘Sleeping Giant’ Fault Under Canada Shows Major Earthquake Potential

After 12 millennia of relative inactivity, a geologic fault that stretches across the territory of Yukon, Canada, and Alaska now appears capable of producing a major earthquake, according to a new study. The findings point to an underrecognized source of seismic hazard in northwestern Canada. Scientists previously believed that the Tintina fault, which extends roughly 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) from northeast British Columbia through the Yukon and Alaska, remained quiet for the last 40 millio

Humans Counted 8,600 Earthquakes in Yellowstone. AI Says We’re Not Even Close

Before the advent of artificial intelligence, experts often detected earthquakes by analyzing seismic data by hand. Unsurprisingly, this approach takes a long time, is cost-intensive, and usually identifies fewer earthquakes. Machine learning has now changed virtually everything. Using artificial intelligence, researchers have retroactively identified and assigned magnitudes to ten times as many seismic events in historical earthquake data from the Yellowstone caldera from 2008 to 2022 as had b

Android Earthquake Alerts: A global system for early warning

Earthquakes are a constant threat to communities around the globe. While we’ve gotten good at knowing where they’re likely to strike, we still face devastating consequences when they do. What if we could give people a few precious seconds of warning before the shaking starts? Those seconds can be enough time to get off a ladder, move away from dangerous objects and take cover. For years, that’s been the goal of earthquake early warning (EEW) systems. But the expensive seismic networks on which t

Android Phones Can Detect Earthquakes Before the Ground Starts Shaking

Since their first implementation in Mexico and Japan, earthquake early-warning (EEW) systems have provided critical advance notice of imminent earthquakes to countless people. Many seismic countries, however, still don’t have the infrastructure necessary to sustain such crucial networks, leaving their populations vulnerable to devastating earthquakes. Researchers in the U.S. and Germany have tested a global earthquake detection and alert system that makes use of a device many people already own