[extropy-chat] A sad day

Robert J. Bradbury bradbury at aeiveos.com
Tue Oct 11 02:39:12 UTC 2005


Kevin wrote:

> I have a vague memory of either reading an article or watching a
> television program where the author was pitching the idea of using
> some kind of lubricant to prevent the buildup of tension in the
> plates that cause earthquakes.

I have never seen this suggestion but it is not unreasonable.
The use of lubricants to facilitate drilling is quite common.
The injection of lubricants to facilitate plate slippage is not
unreasonable.  But it would be potentially hard and require concrete
activity over an extended area.

One also has to differentiate between "slip" faults and
"break" faults.  Very different and not always clearly
separate.  I would suggest that the lubricant approach
would work with slip faults.  It would not work with break
faults.  In (a) you are dealing with plates slipping past
each other; in (b) you are dealing with plates running into
each other such that the only way around is to snap one
of the plates.  Very distinct phenomena.

Robert







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