Speed kills: fast, potentially damaging earthquakes more common

The Indonesian island of Sulawesi endured widespread damage from a magnitude-7.5 supershear earthquake in 2018. Credit: Ungkeito

The phenomena known as supershear earthquakes — those that travel super fast and can cause more shaking than slower quakes — may be much more common than previously estimated, according to a study of global earthquake data recently published in Nature Geoscience.  PhD student Laura Fattaruso discusses the implications of these findings in their latest piece in Temblor...