Earthquakes occur along fault lines between continental plates, where one plate is diving beneath another. Pressure builds between each plate, called fault stress. When this stress builds enough to ...

A study looking at a small region in Japan has shown that the properties of fault zone rocks really matter for the generation of earthquakes. Earthquakes occur along fault lines between continental ...

Scientists have long known about a major fault off the Pacific Northwest coast that could potentially cause a major ...

Last week, about 60 miles off the coast near Ferndale, California, the tectonic plates shifted under the Pacific Ocean, sending seismic waves through the ocean floor that radiated onto land and were ...

A megathrust earthquake is coming for the Pacific Northwest. But new imaging of undersea faults and fractures has given scientists even more information about the tectonic plates that will cause that ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I cover the history of science and exploration. This week’s massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake in eastern Russia, which triggered ...

Schematic figure of the subduction zone underneath the Kanto region (left) in Japan and the spatial distribution of magnitude 2 to 6 earthquakes on the subduction zone at 60 to 70 kilometers below ...