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3 unusual facts about seismology


Seismology

In 1926 Harold Jeffreys was the first to claim, based on his study of earthquake waves, that below the crust, the core of the Earth is liquid.

In 1703 Martin Lister (1638 to 1712) and Nicolas Lemery (1645 to 1715) proposed that earthquakes were caused by chemical explosions within the earth.

One of the earliest important discoveries (suggested by Richard Dixon Oldham in 1906 and definitively shown by Harold Jeffreys in 1926) was that the outer core of the earth is liquid.


1891 Mino-Owari earthquake

In 1876, John Milne came from England to teach at the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo, and following the earthquake of February 22, 1880, Milne's attention turned to seismology as a primary area of study.

Alessandro Serpieri

Alessandro Serpieri (b. in San Giovanni in Marignano, near Rimini, 31 Oct., 1823; d. Fiesole, 22 Feb., 1885) was an Italian scientist known for work in astronomy and seismology.

Bruce Bolt

He was a consultant on seismology for every major earthquake engineering project including on the Diablo Canyon Power Plant as well as international projects including the Aswan Dam and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.

Gutenberg Glacier

The glacier was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names after German-born seismologist Beno Gutenberg, director of the California Institute of Technology seismology laboratory in the 1930s, and collaborator with Charles F. Richter in developing the Richter Scale, 1935, used to measure the magnitude of earthquakes.

Nuclear power in Japan

Professor Katsuhiko Ishibashi, one of the seismologists who have taken an active interest in the topic, coined the term genpatsu-shinsai (原発震災), from the Japanese words for "nuclear power" and "quake disaster" to express the potential worst-case catastrophe that could ensue.

Thomas C. Hanks

In 1979 the Japanese-American seismologist Hiroo Kanamori, professor of seismology at the California Institute of Technology and Dr. Hanks (then a graduate student at Caltech) suggested the use of Moment magnitude scale to replace the Richter magnitude scale for measuring the relative strength of earthquakes.

Victor Conrad

This took place in the form of the Conrad Observatory for Seismology, situated about 50 km from Vienna near Gutenstein.

Vincent Ellis McKelvey

It took on primary responsibility for operational research in seismology and geomagnetism by agreement with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and 10 units of NOAA were transferred to the Geological Survey.

Yonaguni

Although the majority of the academic society regard the rock formation as natural joint, Masaaki Kimura, a professor of seismology in University of the Ryukyus and some media believe it is an artificial (or artificially modified) structure engraved or built 2,000 to 3,000 years ago.


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