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Mexico Earthquake last week

A project log for Device for Seismic Noise Analysis

Could a digital device to analyze the statistics of the magnitude and 3-D origins of seismic noise predict some local earthquakes?

michael-doodyMichael Doody 09/14/2017 at 11:530 Comments

People have been asking me if my device registered the magnitude 8+  earthquake that happened near Guatemala, off the West coast of southern Mexico on  September 8. There were at least 96 fatalities and thousands were left homeless. Here is a picture to keep a focus on the human cost of these events. Note the total collapse of this residence.  It is not clear from the news report whether anyone died in this house. There was  no warning whatsoever before this earthquake from traditional seismometer monitoring stations.


 Detection of distant quakes is not what this device is for, but the "big one" registered very well on our machine  here in Knoxville. The peak is about half full scale on our machine. Here is the vector magnitude data - this quake was about 1600 miles from the Knoxville machine.

Here's the probability statistic data, log scale, running averaged - 

Here's the vector location data (radians ) pointing at the quake  toward the Southwest. I am not sure, but the later vibrations appearing to come from the Northeast may be S-waves  (transverse waves)  travelling at about half the speed of the initial P-waves (compression waves).  This is a nice illustration of the fact that transverse waves vibrate at a 90 degree angle to the compression waves.

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