NO MATTER where they hit, large earthquakes can trigger a multitude of tiny tremors right across the globe.
Geologists have long suspected that this was the case, the culprit being waves that travel along the Earth’s surface, including Love waves and Rayleigh waves.
Now Aaron Velasco of the University of Texas at El Paso and colleagues have found that large earthquakes cause many more tiny tremors than previously thought. The team gathered data on 15 earthquakes of magnitude 7 or greater from more than 500 seismographic stations worldwide.
In the 5 hours before the waves from a distant earthquake passed…
