Mayotte's volcanic rootsīased on the scientific sleuthing done so far, the tremors seem to be related to a seismic swarm that's gripped Mayotte since last May. “It's like you have colored glasses and just seeing red or something,” says Anthony Lomax, an independent seismology consultant. Most earthquakes send out waves with a slew of different frequencies, but Mayotte's signal was a clean zigzag dominated by one type of wave that took a steady 17 seconds to repeat. Adding to the weirdness, Mayotte's mystery waves are what scientists call monochromatic. However, there was no big earthquake kicking off the recent slow waves.
#The seismac waves of an earthwuake zip#
For intense earthquakes, these surface waves can zip around the planet multiple times, ringing Earth like a bell, Hicks says. Learn about the geophysics behind earthquakes, how they are measured, and where the most powerful earthquake ever witnessed occurred.įinally, chugging along at the end come slow, long-period surface waves, which are similar to the strange signals that rolled out from Mayotte. Both of these so-called body waves have relatively high frequencies, Hicks says, “a sort of ping rather than a rumbling.”Įarthquakes can leave behind incredible devastation, while also creating some of the planet's most magnificent formations. Next come the secondary waves, or S-waves, which have more of a side-to-side motion. The fastest-traveling signals are Primary waves, or P-waves, which are compression waves that move in bunches, like what happens to an extended slinky that gets suddenly pushed at one end.
#The seismac waves of an earthwuake series#
This sends out a series of waves known as a “wave train” that radiates from the point of the rupture, explains Stephen Hicks, a seismologist at the University of Southampton.
In a normal earthquake, the built-up tensions in Earth's crust release with a jolt in mere seconds. Why are the low-frequency waves so weird? And researchers are still chasing down the geologic conundrum. Yet many features of the waves are remarkably weird-from their surprisingly monotone, low-frequency “ring” to their global spread. “It doesn't mean that, in the end, the cause of them is that exotic,” he notes. “I don't think I've seen anything like it,” says Göran Ekström, a seismologist at Columbia University who specializes in unusual earthquakes. Was it a meteor strike? A submarine volcano eruption? An ancient sea monster rising from the deep? That small action kicked off another ripple of sorts, as researchers around the world attempted to suss out the source of the waves. An earthquake enthusiast who uses the handle saw the curious zigzags and posted images of them to Twitter. Geological Survey's real-time seismogram displays.
Only one person noticed the odd signal on the U.S. These waves didn't just zip by they rang for more than 20 minutes. They traversed vast oceans, humming across Chile, New Zealand, Canada, and even Hawaii nearly 11,000 miles away. The waves buzzed across Africa, ringing sensors in Zambia, Kenya, and Ethiopia. The seismic waves began roughly 15 miles off the shores of Mayotte, a French island sandwiched between Africa and the northern tip of Madagascar. On the morning of November 11, just before 9:30 UT, a mysterious rumble rolled around the world.
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