Publication Date:
2003-08-09
Description:
The 2001 Kunlunshan earthquake was an extraordinary event that produced a 400-km-long surface rupture. Regional broadband recordings of this event provide an opportunity to accurately observe the speed at which a fault ruptures during an earthquake, which has important implications for seismic risk and for understanding earthquake physics. We determined that rupture propagated on the 400-km-long fault at an average speed of 3.7 to 3.9 km/s, which exceeds the shear velocity of the brittle part of the crust. Rupture started at sub-Rayleigh wave velocity and became supershear, probably approaching 5 km/s, after about 100 km of propagation.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Bouchon, Michel -- Vallee, Martin -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2003 Aug 8;301(5634):824-6.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Universite Joseph Fourier and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Laboratoire de Geophysique Interne et Tectonophysique, Boite postale 53, 38041 Grenoble, France.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12907799" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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