Testing testing: (Sales writing)

Earthquakes come and go from the public eye with such global disasters as the Japanese Earthquake of 2011 and the Haitian earthquake of 2010. Despite large portions of the Earth's population living in potentially at-risk zones, earthquakes and their causes remain a mysterious concept to many. What does cause them? The short answer is that loose chunks of the earth's outer layer whack into each other, the long answer is as follows.

Making the ground shake like a puddle is no easy feat, and for noticeable earthquakes an enormous amount of energy is required. Where does this force come from? The origin of the majority of earthquakes is movement of the earth's tectonic plates.

The earth, rather than being a homogeneous ball of rock, consists of layers. As seen in this NASA illustration, there are four primary layers: the inner and outer cores at the earth’s center, and the inner and outer mantles above the core. Bordering the outer mantle is a thin layer of rock known as the earth's crust. You could think of these layers as those of a four level cake, with the crust being icing on top.

The tectonic plate movement that we are looking to understand results from interaction between the mantle and crust in a zone known as the lithosphere. The lithosphere is formed from the uppermost portion of the outer mantle and the crust taken together. Just beneath the lithosphere is a softer, relatively malleable layer of rock known as the asthenosphere. In more familiar terms, the Earth’s continents and many smaller plates form the lithosphere, while what they rest on forms the asthenosphere.

These rocky lithosphere plates slosh around the earth's service on their asthenosphere holding layer, colliding, rubbing and passing slowly above and below each other. During their motion, the plates sometimes become stuck at their edges like gears in a huge machine. Movement of the whole plate does not stop, and force builds up at the snag as the two bodies remain ensnared, until eventually they burst free releasing all of their energy. This energy travels rapidly outwards in great concentric circles, disrupting the landscape on the surfaces of the two plates as it goes. When a big enough snag occurs, the ensuing waves of force cause an earthquake.

Worth noting is that other sources of subterranean energy release, like magma movement beneath volcanic regions can also cause earthquakes. It is however the force from tectonic plate collisions and scrapes that generates the most of the earthquakes we experience. Curious readers can find out more in the following links.



Additional resources:

The Southern California Integrated GPS Network Education Module
http://scign.jpl.nasa.gov/learn/eq1.htm
This NASA affiliated site has great mechanical analysis as well as several illustrative flash animations.

US Geological Survey
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/kids/eqscience.php
This US government site aims its language at younger learners, but should still be educational and engaging to an older audience.

The National Geographic
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/photogalleries/humans-cause-earthquakes/index.html
Here you can find a photo-essay by national geographic on potential artificial causes of earthquakes.

Howstuffworks.com
http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/natural-disasters/earthquake2.htm
Howstuffworks.com provides one of the more thorough web based coverages of earthquake terminology and theory.

A problogue

We live in a time defined by its uncertainties. Will our children have a safe world to live in, will tomorrow be better, will we ever solve what we fight: poverty, hunger, hatred and the like? Conversely, as the days tick by, the truly unknown continually shrinks. There are no more blank spots on the map, no sea monsters to live in them, and progressively fewer of those peculiar unanswered questions that once spawned everything from fairy-tales to frighten children, to religions to calm wavering hearts in the dark.

In one place though, we can at least believe that there be serpents. From our perspective, human thought appears limitless. We can at whim call up images of never-existing landscapes, and at the same time seek concrete answers to those same problems that make us frown and stir as we attempt sleep. It is because of this faculty that we file away our mysteries one at a time. It is because of this faculty that we are still hungry for yet another problem immediately after laying the last to rest.

In several senses, nowhere is thought better broadcast than in its written form. Spoken words can rise only as high as their speaker feels on a given day; pictures, paintings and other visual expressions while powerful, leave their viewers far short of the definitive authorial stance that text provides, and few mediums have the longevity or reproducibility that writing can easily attain. The task of writing though is not a perfect one.

Inevitably, readers find themselves thinking something slightly, or greatly, different from what authors originally intended. Sometimes we write even the most intriguing ideas in a form that displays none of their humor, wit, intrigue, and aptness that they originally contained. The process can even fall victim to something so simple as omission; an idea squirreled away in the head of a writer often makes sense, for he has access to those critical details that its interpretation requires, but on relation these are left out, and like them so is the reader.

Fortunately, like in most human undertakings practice can make us better written communicators. We can with patience overturn our procedural weaknesses and produce better and better prose. For this reason, and because I think that the writers invited to this blog have interesting things to say, there is a blog in the first place. We look forward to writing random stuff, and hope you will enjoy reading us.

-Tim W