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Fractals linked to earthquakes. Is that a first?
The timing of large, shallow earthquakes across the globe follows a mathematical pattern known as the devil’s staircase, according to a new study of seismic sequences.
Previously, scientists and their models have theorized that earthquake sequences happen periodically or quasi-periodically, following cycles of growing tension and release.
Researchers call it the elastic rebound model, says UPI.
In reality, periodic earthquake sequences are surprisingly rare.
Instead, scientists found global earthquake sequences tend to occur in clusters — outbursts of seismic events separated by long but irregular intervals of silence.
The findings, published this week in the journal Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, suggest large earthquakes increase the probability of subsequent seismic events.
Previous models failed to account for the interconnected nature of global fault systems. Seismic event don’t occur in isolation. Each major quake alters the dynamics of other fault systems.
While the research suggests large quake sequences are “burstier” than previously thought, they remain as unpredictable as ever. The gaps between bursts are irregular, making it exceedingly difficult to anticipate the next cluster.
“Mathematically described as the devil’s staircase, such temporal patterns are a fractal property of nonlinear complex systems, in which a change of any part — e.g., rupture of a fault or fault segment — could affect the behavior of the whole system,” scientists wrote in their paper.
The devil’s staircase pattern is also evidence in Earth’s sedimentation sequences and reversals of the planet’s magnetic field, as well as crustal uplift and erosion rates.
In addition to ignoring the interconnected nature of fault systems, most previous earthquake pattern models focused on too few earthquakes across time frames that were too short and regions that were too small. As a result, earlier models failed to pick up on the staircase pattern.
Full article here.
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More on the ‘devil’s staircase’ here [Science Times].
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“Mathematically described as the devil’s staircase, such temporal patterns are a fractal property of nonlinear complex systems, in which a change of any part — e.g., rupture of a fault or fault segment — could affect the behavior of the whole system,” scientists wrote in their paper.
I presume they are referring to “the Cantor ternary function, the Lebesgue function, Lebesgue’s singular function, the Cantor–Vitali function, the Devil’s staircase, the Cantor staircase function,and the Cantor–Lebesgue function.” [my bold] from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor_function
Surely this type of behavior should be evident in many weather and climate parameters as well?
Phi know ally, just ream ember WHO tolled the bell warning of SatUN’s endless D-lay plots.
It was thickly palpable that they would resort to something “bold” (meaning extreme) if they could not stop Brexit.
Buy the attitude of vex spurt O-Thor-IT, a bull lyin’ sci11UNs communications strict lie will not accept Rial IT without predict shh! UN.
“…and Justice for ALL” — MetALLica
Orwell lyin’ staring US to wards hell MET no. just response. The left snapped escalation right through the roof in English class. Now’s nap-after math.
Hind Sight in Less UN
God’s designs for natural balance aren’t AIweis amenable to savagely-draconian “all or nothing” demands for predictability. Human psychology’s a free-spinning factor in the “true” response to locking down financial dependence on SatUN.
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Left naivety was exponentially off-the-scale. They were sure that globe-all try-ruin-NY was the ants sore and that no tie ran nuke lead door would ever leave them be trade by reverse sing sack red poll icy.
I’m slowly bringing out the review on Suggestions-42.
The “English class” tip may have been a little too subtle even for some of the sharper shepherds, but the problem did move to LA even though most readers will have no clue who Klein (invariant support = Jupiter), Ford, and Tory are. Everything had to be symbolic because we don’t have free speech anymore. That was the darkest chapter. I didn’t even refine the draft before posting. Mid-January marked the beginning of a chapter orders of magnitude worse than the aftermath now, but at the time it seemed few were aware of the intensity of the strike. January 15 & 16 2020 were 2 of the worst days of my entire life.
Some time back, I watched a tv prog about the building of a tunnel under the Bosphorus where one of the engineering problems to be overcome was the threat of earthquakes. That claimed that the fault that runs through it is part of a larger system where one quake puts more pressure on the next pinch point westward, undoing like a zipper until the whole process starts again in the East. The idea that this paper has found something new is a bit odd.
The finding is interesting but may be an artifact of the methods used in the study.
I’ll have to give it a good look. The Devil’s Staircase can be created with just a line or two of code — I have a sample in my 30-year old Basic chaos files somewhere.
The structure is the Staircase is very simple — easier to create on one’s own with a ruler and graph paper.
Reblogged this on WeatherAction News and commented:
Now that is a most interesting find.