![]() "We don't want to see an earthquake any larger than the 1960 earthquake, that's for sure," Ruff says.īut it could happen. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean another major earthquake would be any less destructive. Today those instruments make up a global tsunami warning system. "As soon as that happened, of course, it just prompted this huge new effort to have even better, high-quality seismographs located all the way around the world," Ruff says. ![]() "It just caused an immediate flurry of activity," says Ruff, because scientists realized that if they had the right instruments to monitor those waves, they could warn people that a tsunami was headed their way. They also were just realizing that big seismic waves, like the ones that Chile experienced, could actually lift the ocean floor, causing water to roll across the Pacific Ocean and crash into other shores many hours later. "That's very exciting because it's a new type of information that had not yet been available by all the studies from all the generations of seismologists before," says Larry Ruff, a seismologist at the University of Michigan.Īt the time, researchers were just starting to agree that the continents sat on top of giant plates, and that earthquakes were caused as those plates collided and folded into each other. Nature had given the planet something like an ultrasound scan. When it was over, seismologists realized the earthquake had given them a window into Earth's structure. And because they were so strong, scientific instruments from around the world picked up the signal. The seismic waves went through every part of the globe, even its core. What became known as the Great Chilean Earthquake revealed something new about the planet - that the world itself can vibrate like a guitar string. Twelve hours later, another tsunami smashed into Japan.Īs a 1960 newsreel boomed, "Nations reckon up the grim toll of the seismic shocks that triggered a week of devastating earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in Chile, and tidal waves and tropical storms that battered every shore - from the Philippines and Japan to Alaska." Twelve hours after the shaking stopped, a tsunami smashed into Hawaii. The quake expanded the country of Chile by an area equal to about 1,500 football fields. That increased the area of the country itself." ![]() "The whole country stretched during this earthquake," explains Barrientos. He now knows that during that quake, while he was stuck on the road, his hometown lurched about 30 feet west in a fraction of a minute. "It was a huge, huge earthquake," he says. ![]()
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