New Work Reinforces Megaquake's Harsh Lessons in Geoscience | Science

A game of ring toss. March's huge quake (yellow contours) and past smaller quakes (colored loops) have left a patch of threatening fault (question mark). CREDIT: ADAPTED FROM MARK SIMONS ET AL., SCIENCE (2011) Many seismologists had thought that the offshore fault north of Tokyo was fairly simple and uniform. The ocean plate diving beneath Japan, the thinking went, should stick and slowly build up

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High-tech analyses of Japan's March earthquake overturn long-held views of fault behavior and warn that another disaster may be looming.