Surprising USGS study suggests new definition for aftershocks*
By Michael F. Haverluck
Controversial results from a new study by the United States Geological Survey have provided a shocker to scientists by indicating seismic waves from the 8.6 East Indian Ocean earthquake on April 11 circled the earth multiple times, triggering more than a dozen major earthquakes around the globe within a week.
The evidence could change the definition of “aftershocks” as scientists have known them for generations. According to the USGS report, there was a “100-fold increase in seismicity” on the other side of the earth in Baja, Calif., which experienced “13 events in the following two days, ” including 6.0 and 7.0 shakers. Japan was another location thousands of miles away from the original temblor where large quakes were triggered.
And what is so shocking to the scientific community?
“While aftershocks have traditionally been defined as those smaller earthquakes that happen after and nearby the main fault rupture, scientists now recognize that this definition is wrong, ” a statement by the USGS reads. “Instead, aftershocks are simply earthquakes of any size and location that would not have taken place had the main shock not struck.”
The 8.6 quake, which took place on a strike-slip fault similar to the San Andreas Fault running through California, was called “unprecedented” by the USGS. “No other recorded earthquake triggered as many large earthquakes elsewhere around the world as this one, ” said USGS seismologist Fred Pollitz, who led the team of geologists conducting the study. “The research has helped change the very definition of ‘aftershock.’”
Within six days after the 8.6 quake, 16 earthquakes registering 5.5 or higher on the Richter scale were triggered around the earth. Coincidence? Only one similarly sized shaker occurred during the six days before the major East Indian Ocean quake.
“I didn’t think this could happen, ” expressed Menlo Park-based USGS geophysicist Ross Stein, who co-authored the USGS study that was published in the science journal “Nature, ” where the quake’s massive trigger effect is explained. “I think most of my colleagues will be skeptical; I would be, too.” One such skeptic is Stein’s colleague, Susan Hough, who works out of the USGS lab in Pasadena, Calif. “If the less quakes before are a fluke, are we sure the increase afterward isn’t as well?” questioned Hough.
Stein disagrees. “We don’t have a smoking gun, ” asserted Stein. “We have to build a statistical case, and we have a strong one.”
“The whole earth was vibrating like a bell, ” Stein visualized, noting that this atypical type of earthquake has a higher probability of destabilizing other spots ripe for quakes. He went on to explain that the majority of the 16 subsequent major quakes were located inside the tracks of the seismic waves. But what makes the transference of these seismic waves – traveling around the earth multiple times – possible? According to creationist and former atheist, Walt Brown, director of the Center for Scientific Creation, oceans of water trapped miles underneath the earth’s crust are just the vehicle that transmits earthquake shockwaves thousands of miles.
Brown, who holds a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Mechanical Engineering, was by no means surprised by the recent USGS study. He asserts it does not corroborate evolutionists’ plate tectonic theory, but compliments his own hydroplate theory. “All research on earthquakes that I am aware of, including [the recent USGS study] is consistent with the hydroplate theory, ” Brown, a former National Science Foundation Fellow, told WND. “What [the USGS study] points out is a problem for plate tectonics, but [it] is easily understood by the hydroplate theory.”
Brown argues that earthquakes can provide hard evidence that subterranean water exists miles beneath the earth’s surface, insisting that only channels of underground water could conduct shockwaves rapidly over thousands miles, as did the 7.9-magnitude Alaskan Denali quake of 2002, which generated a “seiche” 4, 000 miles away in Lake Pontchartrain, La., sloshing the lake back and forth enough to break boat moorings. The West Point graduate’s theory maintains that approximately half the water currently in the oceans came from interconnected chambers some 10 miles under the entire surface of the earth before exploding forth during the flood of Noah through what is now the 46, 000-mile mid-oceanic ridge. He says the forces of tidal pumping increased the water’s pressure before bursting ─ described as the fountains of the great deep in the flood account of Genesis 7:11 ─ to produce the global deluge some 5, 000 years ago. According to Brown’s theory, “the 10-mile-thick crust opened like a rip in a tightly stretched cloth, ” racing around the earth. “Pressure in the subterranean chamber directly beneath the rupture suddenly dropped [and] caused supercritical water to explode with great violence out of the 10-mile-deep ‘slit’ that wrapped around the earth.”
The force of such a rupture? Brown compares it with the detonation of 1, 800 trillion hydrogen bombs and indicates the remnants of the rip are visible still through satellite imagery of the ocean’s floor. Scars of the catastrophic tear are known today as the mid oceanic ridge, which runs through the center of the Atlantic, curves to the south of Africa and Australia, veers north a couple thousand miles off South America’s west coast, dips beneath North America off Mexico’s west coast to Alaska, resurfaces in the Arctic Circle and continues down through Iceland. His theory is explained in an online video.
Ejected water turned into torrents of rain, while “other jetting water rose above the atmosphere, where it froze and then fell on various regions of earth as huge masses of extreme cold, muddy ‘hail, ’” Brown stated, noting that the most forcefully jettisoned water and rock produced comets, asteroids and meteoroids. “That hail buried, suffocated and froze many animals, including some mammoths.”
Brown said the ejected water caused great instability that the earth is still trying rectify. “Deep folds, up to thousands of miles long and several miles deep, lie at the floor of the western Pacific Ocean in an area centered directly opposite of the Atlantic Ocean, ” Brown explained. “As the flood increasingly altered the earth’s balanced, spherical shape, growing gravitational forces tended to squeeze the earth back toward a more spherical shape.” He said, “Once a ‘tipping point’ was reached, the portion of the subterranean chamber floor – with the most overlying rock removed – rose at least eight miles to become today’s Atlantic floor, ” Brown continued. “This caused the Pacific floor – the region inside the ‘Ring of Fire’ – to sink and buckle inward, producing folds called ocean trenches.”
Brown contends the release on the Atlantic side caused suction on the opposite side of the globe to pull down the area where the world’s deepest ocean trenches (around the Pacific Rim) are concentrated today. He also states that tens of thousands of volcanoes formed inside the ‘Ring of Fire’ (Pacific Rim) – where 90 percent of the world’s earthquakes originate – which he says provides evidence that a massive pressure release and drop (of the Pacific Rim) formed this volcanic zone during the flood.
Brown maintains that this flood buried and formed the fossil record and notes that when the fountains of the great deep ceased after 40 days, “the hydroplates slid down and away from the inclining Mid-Atlantic Ridge, ” with the water underneath the plates acting as a lubricant to propel them – giving the imagery of Europe and Africa separating from North and South America. “Once the gradually advancing plates reached speeds of about 45 miles per hour, they would collide, compress and buckle. The plates that buckled downward became ocean trenches and those that buckled upward became mountains.” But Brown said the key to the current revelations about earthquakes is that there still are large pockets and channels of water underneath the earth’s crust that can quickly transmit shockwaves.
Could subterranean water have played a role in the rapid transmission of the 8.6 quake’s seismic waves that circled the earth several times, as Brown claims it did in the Denali quake that reached Louisiana? Two years ago in 2010, an 8.8-magnitude Chilean quake caused a similar seiche at Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain, more than 4, 700 miles to the north.
Yet many geologists don’t acknowledge water existing miles beneath the earth’s surface. Evolutionists contend that earthquakes can be explained by plate tectonics, which say the earth’s crust is divided into roughly 12 large plates and several small ones that float on and travel independently over the upper mantle. The theory contends that continental drift and seafloor spreading are responsible for creating the earth’s geologic features. The theory postulates that each plate is made of rigid rock formed by upwelling magma at oceanic ridges, where plates move apart. It also alleges that a subduction zone forms when plates come together, in which one plate is forced under another and into the earth’s mantle. According to the theory, a majority of earthquakes and volcanoes take place on tectonic plate boundaries
But Brown says plate tectonics cannot work for a variety of theoretic and technical reasons, including that a plate of 30 miles or more thick physically could not dive under an adjacent plate, because that would create mountains of 150, 000 feet in elevation. Brown says all earthquakes today are simply aftershocks from what convulsed the earth during the flood of Noah, and the activity is just part of the earth returning to its pre-flood form.
*This had been publiced two days ago at WND (exclusive) and just received here from Ocean Space
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A note from John Faraclas at www.allaboutshipping.co.uk : How is the shipping community prepared to deal with extraordinary phenomena such as the above? What risk assessment(s) is in place? After the latest Japanese earthquake that we witnessed, the need for being wel prepared is more than a necessity. Having said that, at least we need the minimum of emergency planning to be there, at least to minimise the effects of such events… As a young boy I have witnessed similar events of lower scale, but with substantial force and consequences off the coast of Chile in Valparaiso in 1957 on board the ss Santa Despina a 15, 000 twendecker during discharge at the port’s roads.
