Watch the Effects of Earthquakes Just Hours After They Occur

By Nancy Atkinson - September 23, 2010 at 5:52 AM UTC | Planetary Science

Princeton University has developed software that can produce realistic "movies" of earthquakes based on complex computer simulations, and these visualizations will be available on the internet within hours of a disastrous upheaval. For example, this video of a 5.7 scale Earthquake off the coast of Peru occurred yesterday, September 22, 2010. "In our view, this could truly change seismic science," said Princeton's Jeroen Tromp, a professor of geosciences and applied and computational mathematics, who led the effort. "The better we understand what happens during earthquakes, the better prepared we can be. In addition, advances in understanding seismic waves can aid basic science efforts, helping us understand the underlying physics at work in the Earth's interior. These visualizations, we believe, will add greatly to the research effort.''

The videos show waves of ground motion spreading out from the earthquake's epicentre. In making them widely available, the team of computational seismologists and computer scientists hope they can aid researchers working to improve understanding of earth quakes and develop better maps of the Earth's interior. The team describe the system and how the videos are created in a paper in the October 2010 edition of Geophysical Journal International.

The movies will be made available for free to scientists, members of the public and news organizations interested in featuring such images on television and the Internet. The easily downloadable videos can be viewed at:

http://global.shakemovie.princeton.edu.

They tell the story in a language that is easy to understand, said Tromp.

Read more about this project at the

ShakeMovie website.

Source: Royal Astronomical Society

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com