Dr. Hiroo Kanamori Elected Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences
Dr. Hiroo Kanamori, John E. and Hazel S. Smits
Professor of Geophysics, Emeritus was elected foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences. The 21 foreign associates are from 15 countries in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. They are nonvoting members of the Academy, with citizenship outside the United States.
Click here to read the News From the National Academy of Sciences.
Seismo Faculty and Students Enjoy Retreat
Twenty-six members of the Seismo Lab spent the day at the Castaic Lake State Recreation Area in
Castaic, CA for this year's 2012 Student Faculty Retreat. The graduate students, post-docs, faculty, and staff on the
retreat enjoyed a morning hike along some of the park's trails and a
fun-filled afternoon of team-building games along the lakefront. The main
event was the "Amazing Race: Seismo Lab Student Faculty Retreat Edition",
for which each retreat participant received a certificate of completion.
The afternoon was topped off by an awards ceremony in which the winning teams for each game received prizes. A four-course al fresco dinner at a
local Italian restaurant completed the retreat.
Lean more about the Seismo Lab Annual Student Faculty Retreat http://www.seismolab.caltech.edu/daily.html
4/11/2012 (Mw 8.6), Offshore Sumatra, Indonesia Back-Projection Results
The April 11 2012 M8.6 earthquake off-shore Sumatra is a record-breaking event in many respects:
it is the largest strike-slip earthquake and the largest intraplate earthquake ever recorded.
High-resolution source imaging by back-projection of high-frequency teleseismic array data (by Lingsen Meng, Jean-Paul Ampuero, and Yingdi Luo) shows that this is also one of the most
complicated ruptures ever witnessed by modern seismology. It involved rupture on at least three
different faults in a system of almost orthogonal faults.
Click here to read the article on the Techtonics Observatory website.
The vibrational spectrum of iron, the most abundant element in Earth's core, at 171 gigapascals. By squeezing iron between two diamond anvils (inset), Caltech researchers reproduced the pressures found in Earth's core.
[Credit: Caitlin A. Murphy/Caltech]Seismo Lab Mineral Physics Researchers Study Properties of Iron in Earth's Core
A team, including Seismo Lab assistant professor of mineral physics Jennifer Jackson and graduate student Caitlin Murphy (first author of the paper), has honed in on how iron behaves under the conditions found deep in the earth by conducting extremely high-pressure experiments on the element. The team used diamond anvil cells (DACs) to squeeze the iron samples, reproducing the types of pressures felt in the earth's core. Their research appears in the December 20 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.
Click here to read Caltech's article.
Click here for the article published in Geophysical Research Letters.
Laura Alisic Awarded the CSE Prize 2011
Seismo Lab graduate student Laura Alisic, along with two other scientists, has been awarded the Computational Science and Engineering Prize 2011 by Springer for outstanding work on simulating global mantle convection at tectonic plate boundary-resolving scales.
Congratulations, Laura! Click here for more about Laura.
ShakeAlert is the current version of an early warning system now being tested by Caltech and UC Berkeley in collaboration with the Southern California Earthquake Center, ETH Zurich and the USGS.Caltech Awarded $2 Million to Develop Earthquake Early Warning System
The California Institute of Technology has been awarded $2 million of a $6 million grant by the Gordon and Berry Moore Foundation to help develop a prototype earthquake early warning system for the Pacific Coast of the United States. The grant will allow seismologists at Caltech, the University of California, Berkeley, and University of Washington, Seattle, in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey, to learn about the science of earthquakes and the best way to capture and analyze seismic data in order to give schools, utilities, industries and the general public as much time as possible—most likely seconds to several minutes—before the ground begins to shake.
“The Foundation’s grant is a huge contribution to moving forward the science of earthquake early warning systems,” said Thomas Heaton, director of the Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory and professor of geophysics and of civil engineering at Caltech.
Click here to read the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation press release.
Brent Minchew Receives ARCS Fellowship
Seismo Lab graduate student Brent Minchew was given an Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Foundation Scholar Award. This award is for outstanding science, engineering and medical research graduate and undergraduate students who are citizens of the United States.
Congratulations, Brent! Click here for more about Brent.
M5.8 Earthquake Hits Virginia on August 23, 2011 at 1:51 p.m. EDT
Lingsen Meng Receives CTBTO Best Young Scientist Award
Seismo Lab graduate student Lingsen Meng was presented with the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization's Best Young Scientist Award for two presentations he made on the Tohoku-Oki earthquake at the CTBTO 2011 Science and Technology conference held in Vienna, Austria.
Congratulations, Lingsen! Click here for more about Lingsen.
Seismologist Reflects on his Firsthand Experience of the Japanese Earthquake
Eminent seismologist Hiroo Kanamori, Caltech's Smits Professor of Geophysics, Emeritus, has been studying the movement of the earth his entire career. On March 11 he was in Tokyo, experiencing firsthand the largest earthquake in the country's recorded history. For the full story, click here.
Simons Argues Against Hazard Prevention Cuts
Less than two weeks after a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami devastated a large swath of Japan, Caltech geophysicist Mark Simons, in today's Wall Street Journal, calls attention to federal budget proposals that would cut funding for prevention technologies. "Mitigating against future disasters depends on monitoring hazardous regions (earthquake faults, volcanoes, landslides and so on) and preparing to survive and recover once catastrophe strikes," Simons says in the opinion piece. By cutting funding for advanced early-warning and response technologies, our country's long-term security is jeopardized, he argues. For the full story, click here.
Looking Inside the San Andreas
A new Earthquake study could provide the best idea yet of how the Big One will affect the Southland.
Please click on the following link to read the entire article in the LA Times.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-geology-earthquake-20110323,0,2928553.story
New View of Tectonic Plates
PASADENA, Calif.—Computational scientists and geophysicists at the University of Texas at Austin and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed new computer algorithms that for the first time allow for the simultaneous modeling of the Earth's mantle flow, large-scale tectonic plate motions, and the behavior of individual fault zones, to produce an unprecedented view of plate tectonics and the forces that drive it.
A paper describing the whole-earth model and its underlying algorithms will be published in the August 27 issue of the journal Science and also featured on the cover.
The work "illustrates the interplay between making important advances in science and pushing the envelope of computational science," says Michael Gurnis, the John E. and Hazel S. Smits Professor of Geophysics, director of the Caltech Seismological Laboratory, and a coauthor of the Science paper.
The paper, "The Dynamics of Plate Tectonics and Mantle Flow: From Local to Global Scales," was also coauthored by Georg Stadler, Carsten Burstedde, Lucas C. Wilcox and Omar Ghattas all at the University of Texas at Austin and Laura Alisic of Caltech. The work was supported by the NSF, the Department of Energy's Office of Science, and—at the Caltech Tectonics Observatory—by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
Kathy Svitil
Click here to read Kathy Svitil's full article.
Click here to visit Science magazine's home page.
Community Seismic Network
Robert W. Clayton, Professor of Geophysics, is working on a New Scientific Opportunity USB3 - Component Accelerometers. We are developing a new earthquake monitoring (seismic network) system, Community Seismic Network (CSN) based on a dense array of low-cost sensors. The goal of the system is to produce block-by-block estimates of strong ground shaking. The information from these sensors will be sent to central computers that will process the data and produce localized estimates of ground shaking on a block-by-block basis - essentially, motions of the evolving seismic wave field during local earthquakes. This information will guide emergency responders and promises to lead to a new level of understanding of the physics of earthquakes and their impact on Southern California. The development of the new network is partially supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Learn more
