An Off The Wall Theory, A WAY OFF The Wall Theory

When I say I have an off the wall theory I mean off the wall. I believe that what caused the Haiti quake also caused the Baja quake. The North American plate is rotating counterclockwise. The poor little Gonave micro plate is sandwiched between the North American plate and the Caribbean plate and is being crushed, twisted shoved this way and that so much so that it is slowly being destroyed.

The Haiti quake was a strike slip quake with just a tiny bit of down slip. The Gonave micro plate in relationship to the North American plate is moving east.

The Pacific plate is moving northwest in relationship to the North American plate is moving southeast. However since the North American plate is rotating counterclockwise California is slowly but surly being torn away from the North American plate. In time all of California west of the Sierras with with either be a peninsula or an island. By the way, the over all movement of the Pacific plate is also counterclockwise. That is one of the reason Japan catches hell all the time.

The Baja quake was a strike slip quake with just a tiny bit of of down slip. This tells me it was the Pacific plate that moved, but don't hold me to that. I reserved the right to be wrong. What this did to the faults in California is hard to say, but I'm sure it weakened some and strengthen some. I guess you could say it brought us closer, much closer to the day Southern California will have its quake and what a whopper it's going to be.

The old saying “that anything is possible” goes here, but how probable it is is what counts. My feeling is that the probability of my theory is very, very low. But it is something to think on.

This is just a guess on my part, but the quake could occur on San Andreas fault, the Elsinore fault, or somewhere in the Eastern California Shear Zone/Walker Lane Belt.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122531261

http://www.earth.northwestern.edu/people/seth/demos/PLATE/plate.html

http://www.spring.net/geo/JohnVolos/Public/Portal/EARTH_MECHAN/structure_of_the_earth.htm#a10

Someone brought that up many years ago when McYoung was doing big blocks of magnitude quakes in an dream of her's for Southern California.. they posted the "ring of fire" moving counter clock-wise and that seemed to be what it was about an year ago and the last I heard on the "silent" quakes up in Seattle..in the science of them also...things wer temporarily movign east instead of west. I've not heard to much "news" on their activity as of late. In the meantime, big write up in the newspaper yesterday, they "OK-ed" that city hall and "tusuami" tower off Cannon Beach on the Oregon coast as an preparation for an off-shore quake some day. It won't be as tall as is the "Space Needle", but they say it will be embeded down deep into bedrock on steel anchors.
They hope that it will stay standing in the event of an on-shore tusumi in an area
where getting off the beach and up to high land is difficult to do very fast. If indeed they say that there was one in 1964 (Alaska)where this kid at 6 years old saw "sea foam" on highway 101...it meant it had climbed "up" ground four blocks from the beach there...he mentioned the people at Beverly Beach State Park, and I remember that, it went up an creek, under the highway bridge and took them with logs to sea in their tent..at night, most unexpected. Four were claimed killed by the event. It's an step in the right direction I think Don, at least someone is thinking about it...someone is listening to making some sense for the future.

Just because it's "unconventional" in terms of the common USGS folks doesn't mean your theory is "off the wall" or even "off base" for that matter. A sneaking suspicion can sometimes be very dead on.

Hi Don!

Interesting. ( I think ah need to have an interesting-ectomy on my vocabulary, but so much has been happening lately! (all too cool))


So the Gonave Plate is essentially a fracture caught in the blender blades of the larger plates.

The recent activity would be a pop gun compared to the potential activity, if a major shift, powers up one of the plates (like Japan!).

Let's say the Pacific Northwest goes on as planned by USGS sometime within the next 99 years, that might be enuf "oomph" to do this theory proud.

Volcanos, Earthquakes, potential new Island formation...hmm, could be mighty __________. (didn't type it)

In Physics, studying collisions, you learn that the least massive participant receives the largest amount of energy in the collision.

The plates are interlocked, but they are floating, so this potential doesn't sound unrealistic.

And when the other recent larger events occurred, Haiti went up in smoke, so to me, your premise looks more plausible than not.

Amazing.

You present a very good case! ( I love the 'ootb' (out of the box) thinking.)

[I wonder if volcanic activity would be a precursor to a larger quake or visa versa?)

I love to fire up what's left of the grey cells, thanx for this one!

--M

Hi Marc. This is something Petra and were I introduced to about 12 years ago. It does work some of the time, but not all of the time. I saw the Hector Mine quake getting ready to occur, but it tool a lot longer then I thought it would. Then when the quakes started popping on the San Andreas fault after the Hector Mine quake I just knew it was going to go, but for what ever reason it didn't.

I don't think it requires a real strong distant quake, but a moderate to large nearby quake could cause the same thing. The signals could be a couple of swarms near a major fault, or a couple of moderate quakes near a major fault or on the fault itself. The quake could occur on any number of faults in the area. It could occur on a fault where were seeing very little activity on, or it occur on a fault that is having small quakes every day. Take Care...Don

Snip:

“Seismograms from small earthquakes revealed that within the fault zone there were areas of fluid-filled fractures. What caught the researchers' attention was that these areas shifted slightly from time to time. The repeating earthquakes also became smaller and more frequent during these intervals – an indication of a weakened fault.”

"Movement of the fluid in these fractures lubricates the fault zone and thereby weakens the fault," says Niu. "The total displacement of the fluids is only about 10 meters at a depth of about three kilometers, so it takes very sensitive seismometers to detect the changes, such as we have at Parkfield."

“What caused the fluids to shift? Intriguingly, the researchers noticed that on two occasions the shifts came after the fault zone was disturbed by seismic waves from large, distant earthquakes, such as the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake. Pressure from these waves may have been enough to cause the fluids to flow. "So it is possible that the strength of faults and earthquake risk is affected by seismic events on the other side of the world," says Niu.”

“The paper is published in the October 1 edition of Nature.”

“*Paul Silver died tragically in an automobile accident in August.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090930132654.htm