Seismology
In Our Time: Science
00:00
What's an Earthquake?
Earth has had one objective for four and a half billion years - to cool down. The thing that drives the whole cabbage is it comes from plate tectonics. These forces are building up stresses along the boundaries of these plates. And obviously if you build up enough stress, enough force, enough energy on the rock, it will break at some point. We can get anything from a magnitude nine earthquake like we see in Tahuku in 2011 or lots of little earthquakes such as smaller magnitudes.
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