• Question: Why do you think the earthquake in Japan was so large?

    Asked by smccall to Drew on 20 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Drew Rae

      Drew Rae answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      The size of an earthquake is to do with how much movement there is along fault lines. There is a general idea that stress can grow along fault lines, so that if you don’t have any earthquakes for a long time, the next earthquake will be really big. This makes logical sense, but the evidence doesn’t fully back it up, so it might be more complicated than that.

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