PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

The ripple effect of small earthquakes near major faults

Minor quakes can disrupt natural tectonic patterns deep underground and change stress landscape, new study finds

2025-05-14
(Press-News.org) When we think of earthquakes, we imagine sudden, violent shaking. But deep beneath the Earth’s surface, some faults move in near silence. These slow, shuffling slips and their accompanying hum—called tremors—don’t shake buildings or make headlines. But scientists believe they can serve as useful analogs of how major earthquakes begin and behave.

A new study by geophysicists at UC Santa Cruz explains how some of these tremor events can yield insights into how stress builds up on the dangerous faults above where major earthquakes occur. The study, to be published on May 14 in the journal Science Advances, was led by Gaspard Farge, a postdoctoral researcher in the university’s Seismo Lab, and Earth and planetary sciences professor Emily Brodsky, the lab’s principal investigator.

When faults where tectonic plates meet slip fast past each other, earthquakes result. Tremors are produced when this happens slowly, usually tens of miles underground—often in subduction zones, where one plate dives beneath another. Tremors don’t pose immediate danger, but they also shouldn’t be ignored because they often happen in the vicinity of where the world’s biggest earthquakes eventually occur, say the study’s authors.

“We find that the faults that produce tremor are more sensitive and connected to their surroundings than previously thought,” said Farge, who researches what processes shape minute seismic activity. “Even small, frequent earthquakes can affect how a major fault behaves.”

Chaotic effect of small quakes Farge and Brodsky discovered that small earthquakes, even those tens of kilometers away from the main fault, can disturb a tremor’s natural rhythm. As a patch of the fault begins to slip, it usually nudges its neighbors along for the ride—leading to large, synchronized tremor episodes. But when small quakes send seismic waves rippling through the area, they can throw off that coordination.

These outside disturbances can either speed up or delay tremor activity, depending on timing and location. And because small earthquakes happen far more often than large ones, they may constantly jostle the system out of synchrony.

Over time, this could explain why some segments of a fault show highly regular tremor patterns—slipping in coordinated episodes—while others remain chaotic. The segments aren’t just shaped by the rocks underground, a marble here, granite there; they also adapt to the constant perturbation from nearby seismic activity.

The dynamic Northwest This pattern is evident in the Cascadia subduction zone, which extends from Northern California, through Oregon and Washington, to British Columbia. The zone produces extensive tremor activity and very large earthquakes on a 400-year basis. Across Oregon, the subduction is almost silent—and without perturbation from earthquakes—the plate slips like a clock, every year and a half in a section hundreds of kilometers long, tremor producing events.

In Northern California, however, the activity of small earthquakes near Cape Mendocino disturbs the regularity of the fault, and the tremor is produced in small, disorganized episodes.

Scientists have known that the shape and makeup of a fault zone—the rock types, temperature, water content, and even the slope of the sinking plate—all help define how and where a tremor happens. These are called structural factors, and they affect how sticky the fault is and how easily it slips.

But this new study introduces a twist: dynamic factors, like the stress waves from small earthquakes nearby, may also shape when and where tremor happens—and whether it occurs in a smooth, predictable way or in a scattered, messy fashion.

“These findings go beyond tremors. By showing how small earthquakes can affect the timing and behavior of slow fault movements, this discovery opens up new ways to understand the buildup to large, damaging earthquakes,” said Brodsky, a leading earthquake physicist. “If we can track how a tremor responds to these small stress nudges, it may be possible to read the stress landscape of a fault—offering clues about where and when it might rupture in a big way.”

Quake magnitude isn’t everything This study shifts our understanding of a common assumption: that only large forces shape the behavior of major earthquake faults. In fact, tiny, nearby quakes—usually considered too small to matter—may play an outsized role in defining where and how the Earth’s plates slip past one another. That means that by listening to the Earth’s quietest rumbles, we may be able to learn how to better anticipate its loudest ones.

“Ultimately,” Brodsky said, “this study proposes a way to measure the elusive dynamic factors that influence how fault slips—the stress landscape that informs how stress is built up on these dangerous faults.”

“The fact that we can measure and understand the effects of earthquakes’ perturbation on slow fault ruptures gives us hope that we could use the same logic to understand where earthquakes should be expected to be regular, and where not,” Farge concludes.

END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Mass General Brigham researchers pinpoint ‘sweet spot’ for focused ultrasound to provide essential tremor relief

2025-05-14
  KEY TAKEAWAYS Three decades ago, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital pioneered MRI-guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) thalamotomy, a technique that offers lifechanging results for patients. In a new study, researchers looked at results from more than 350 patients treated with MRgFUS for essential tremor to assess clinical improvements and side effects. Their research creates a model of an optimal location for ablation, which will help make the procedure safer and more effective for patients at Mass General Brigham and around the world. For millions of people around the world with essential tremor, everyday activities ...

MRI scans could help detect life-threatening heart disease

2025-05-14
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of the heart could help to detect a life-threatening heart disease and enable clinicians to better predict which patients are most at risk, according to a new study led by UCL (University College London) researchers. Lamin heart disease is a genetic condition that affects the heart’s ability to pump blood and can cause life-threatening abnormal heart rhythms. It is caused by a mutation in the LMNA gene, which is responsible for producing proteins used in heart cells. It often affects people in their 30s and 40s. Lamin disease is rare but also often undiagnosed. About one in 5,000 people in the general population carry a potentially ...

NASA’s Magellan mission reveals possible tectonic activity on Venus

2025-05-14
Vast, quasi-circular features on Venus’ surface may reveal that the planet has ongoing tectonics, according to new research based on data gathered more than 30 years ago by NASA’s Magellan mission. On Earth, the planet’s surface is continually renewed by the constant shifting and recycling of massive sections of crust, called tectonic plates, that float atop a viscous interior. Venus doesn’t have tectonic plates, but its surface is still being deformed by molten material from below. Seeking to better understand the underlying processes driving these deformations, the researchers studied a type of feature called a corona. ...

A step forward in treating serious genetic disorders prenatally

2025-05-14
Injecting medicine into the amniotic fluid staves off progression of spinal muscular atrophy in utero.  Evidence is mounting that clinicians can treat serious genetic disorders prenatally by injecting medicine into the amniotic fluid, thus preventing damage that begins in utero.   A UC San Francisco-led study found that delivering medicine for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) via the amniotic fluid was safe, and it helped prevent damage to nerve cells in the spinal cord, a part of the central nervous system that is responsible for movement. One experiment was done in mice with SMA — a neurodegenerative disease that causes muscular weakness, atrophy, ...

New study shows AI can predict child malnutrition, support prevention efforts

2025-05-14
A multidisciplinary team of researchers from the USC School of Advanced Computing and the Keck School of Medicine, working alongside experts from the Microsoft AI for Good Lab, Amref Health Africa, and Kenya’s Ministry of Health, has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model that can predict acute child malnutrition in Kenya up to six months in advance. The tool offers governments and humanitarian organizations critical lead time to deliver life-saving food, health care, and supplies to at-risk areas.The machine learning model outperforms traditional approaches by integrating clinical data from more than 17,000 Kenyan health facilities with satellite data on crop ...

Microplastics in Texas bays are being swept out to sea

2025-05-14
From tiny pellets to creepy wave-battered baby dolls, the Texas coast is a notable hot spot for plastic debris. But when researchers from The University of Texas at Austin went searching for microplastics in sediments pulled from the bottom of Matagorda Bay and its surrounding inlets, they didn’t find much. Most of their samples contained only tens to hundreds of microplastic particles for each kilogram of sediment. This is hundreds to thousands of times less than other bayside environments around the world. Their findings, which were published in Environmental Science & Technology, suggest that rather than settling at the bottom ...

Loneliness increases risk of hearing loss: evidence from a large-scale UK biobank study

2025-05-14
A large-scale cohort study led by researchers from Tianjin University, Shenyang Medical College, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong has uncovered strong evidence that loneliness may independently increase the risk of hearing loss. The findings were published in Health Data Science on May 2, 2025. Hearing loss is one of the most prevalent global health conditions, affecting more than 1.5 billion people. While physiological and behavioral risk factors are well-documented, the role of psychosocial factors such as loneliness has been underexplored. This study sought to determine ...

Study signals a first in drug discovery: AI can tackle aging’s true complexity

2025-05-14
May 2025 — La Jolla, CA / Singapore — A new study published in Aging Cell demonstrates that artificial intelligence can be used not just to accelerate drug discovery, but to fundamentally transform how it’s done—by targeting the full complexity of biological aging. In a collaboration between Scripps Research and Gero, a biotechnology company focused on aging, scientists developed a machine learning model trained to identify compounds that act across multiple biological pathways—a process known as polypharmacology. Instead of seeking a single “magic ...

Combining laboratory techniques yields wealth of information about deadly brain tumors

2025-05-14
Clinicians from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and four other institutions have demonstrated that doctors can gain a wealth of knowledge about a patient’s cancer by using multiple laboratory techniques to study tumor tissue taken from needle biopsies of glioblastoma, a highly aggressive form of brain cancer. The work, funded by Break Through Cancer and published in the April 28 issue of Nature Communications, has implications for additional cancer types. Physicians currently limit collection of small ...

Low-viscosity oil boosts PDMS SlipChip: Enabling safer cell studies and gradient generation

2025-05-14
< Overview > Researchers at Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan, in collaboration with the Institute of Translational Medicine and Biomedical Engineering (IMTIB) in Argentina and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, have advanced the "PDMS SlipChip," a versatile microfluidic device. By using a low-viscosity silicone oil and fine-tuning the fabrication process, they've made the SlipChip more reliable for cell-based experiments and simpler for creating concentration gradients. This breakthrough tackles previous issues like channel clogging and potential ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Fat may play an important role in brain metabolism

New study finds no lasting impact of pandemic pet ownership on human well-being

New insights on genetic damage of some chemotherapies could guide future treatments with less harmful side effects

Gut microbes could protect us from toxic ‘forever chemicals’

Novel modelling links sea ice loss to Antarctic ice shelf calving events

Scientists can tell how fast you're aging from a single brain scan

U.S. uterine cancer incidence and mortality rates expected to significantly increase by 2050

Public take the lead in discovery of new exploding star

What are they vaping? Study reveals alarming surge in adolescent vaping of THC, CBD, and synthetic cannabinoids

ECMWF - delivering forecasts over 10 times faster and cutting energy usage by 1000

Brazilian neuroscientist reveals how viral infections transform the brain through microscopic detective work

Turning social fragmentation into action through discovering relatedness

Cheese may really be giving you nightmares, scientists find

Study reveals most common medical emergencies in schools

Breathable yet protective: Next-gen medical textiles with micro/nano networks

Frequency-engineered MXene supercapacitors enable efficient pulse charging in TENG–SC hybrid systems

Developed an AI-based classification system for facial pigmented lesions

Achieving 20% efficiency in halogen-free organic solar cells via isomeric additive-mediated sequential processing

New book Terraglossia reclaims language, Country and culture

The most effective diabetes drugs don't reach enough patients yet

Breast cancer risk in younger women may be influenced by hormone therapy

Strategies for staying smoke-free after rehab

Commentary questions the potential benefit of levothyroxine treatment of mild hypothyroidism during pregnancy

Study projects over 14 million preventable deaths by 2030 if USAID defunding continues

New study reveals 33% gap in transplant access for UK’s poorest children

Dysregulated epigenetic memory in early embryos offers new clues to the inheritance of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)

IVF and IUI pregnancy rates remain stable across Europe, despite an increasing uptake of single embryo transfer

It takes a village: Chimpanzee babies do better when their moms have social connections

From lab to market: how renewable polymers could transform medicine

Striking increase in obesity observed among youth between 2011 and 2023

[Press-News.org] The ripple effect of small earthquakes near major faults
Minor quakes can disrupt natural tectonic patterns deep underground and change stress landscape, new study finds