History of Seismology

 Early science

 seismology before computers

 1880-1960

 Seismology since computers

 1960-present
Earthquake mythology – ancient
beliefs
India: The earth is held up by 4 elephants that stand on the back of
a turtle. The turtle is balanced on top of a cobra. When the
animals move, the earth trembles and shakes

Siberia: The Earth rests on a sled driven by the god named Tuli. The
dogs have fleas, When they stop to scratch, the Earth shakes
Japan: A great catfish, or namazu, lies curled up under the sea, with
the islands of Japan resting on its back. A demigod, or daimyojin,
holds a heavy stone over his head to keep him from moving. Once
in a while, though, the daimyojin is distracted, the namzu moves
and the earth trembles
New Zealand; Mother Earth has a child in its womb, the young god
Ru. When he stretches and kicks as babies do, he causes
earthquakes.

From: www.fema.gov
Native tales and the Cascadia
megathrust earthquakes
 Stories from the Hoh and Quillette tribes of the Olympic
Peninsula of north west Washington describe an epic battle
between the supernatural beings Thunderbird and Whale.

“The great Thunderbird finally carried the weighty animal

to its nest in the lofty mountains and there was a final and
terrible contest fought. There was shaking, jumping up and
down and trembling of the earth beneath, and the rolling
up of the great waters.”

A reference to the Cascadia Megathrust earthquake of 1705?

From: “The Pacific Northwest Seismograph Network: www.ess.washington.edu”

Beginning of the scientific method
 The Buddha
(563-483 century BC)

“Believe nothing merely because you have been told it, or

because it is tradition, or because you yourself have
imagined it.

Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of

respect for him.

But whatever, after due examination and analysis, you find to

be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all
beings, believe and cling to that doctrine, and take it as
your guide.”
Greek contributubtion - Nature
 Thales (6th Century BC)
 The crucial contribution of Thales to scientific thought
was the discovery of nature. By this, we mean the idea
that the natural phenomena we see around us are
explicable in terms of matter interacting by natural laws,
and are not the results of arbitrary acts by gods.

 Thales' theory of earthquakes,

 The (presumed flat) earth is actually floating on a vast
ocean, and disturbances in that ocean occasionally cause
the earth to shake or even crack, just as they would a large
boat.
Greek contributubtion - geometry
 One of the most important contributions of the
Greeks was their development of Geometry,
culminating in Euclid's Elements, a giant textbook
containing all the known geometric theorems at
that time (about 300 BC), presented in an
elegant logical fashion.

 E.g. The Pythagorean Theorem (the most famous

theorem)
 The square on the hypotenuse of a right angle triangle
= the sum of the squares on the other 2 sides
 Led to the discovery of irrational numbers such as
SQRT(2.0)
Greek contribution - Archimedes
 Archimedes (287-212 BC)
 One of the greatest Greek
mathematicians and Physicists
 Discovered Archimedes Principle ---laws
of Buoyancy – density etc
 Discovered law of lever, centre of
gravity
 Almost invented logarithms and
calculus
Greek contribution - Ptolemy
 Ptolemy (87-150AD)

 Astronomer, mathematician and geographer.

 He believed the planets and sun orbit the Earth in the

order Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn . This
system became known as the Ptolemaic system.
 The Ptolemaic view of the universe was the considered by
western scientists and religious leaders to be the true
picture of the universe for 1400 years
The first seismic instrument
 The Chinese Seismoscope Invented 132 AD
 The instrument is reported to have detected a
four-hundred-mile distant earthquake which was
not felt at the location of the seismoscope.
Arabic contribution
 Al-Hazen, as Europeans referred to Ibn Al-Haytham (d.
1040) was universally acknowledged to have gone beyond
the Greeks in optics.
 European mathematics continued to build on Arab
advances.

Hindu-Arabic Science
 The modern system of numerals, which was replacing the
old, cumbersome system of "Roman numerals" in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was brought to Europe
from India by Arabic traders.
 By streamlining calculations, "Hindu-Arabic“ numerals
immeasurably expanded the ease of doing mathematics.
The European Scientific
Revolution
The Scientific Revolution (1543- )

 1543 - the year that Capernicus published his famous work on

“The Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies “
 Put sun at centre of universe with planets circling the sun.

 Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) --- Invented telescope

 Frances Bacon (1561-1626) --- Pioneered the scientific method

using inductive reasoning.

 Kepler (1571-1630) ---- showed orbits of planets are ellipses

 William Gilbert (1540-1603) --- argued that the Earth was a

magnet
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
 Newton is ranked as the most influential figure in the history of
Western science (Simmons,1996)

 Best known for his 3 laws of motion.

 (i) The law of inertia
 A body in motion moves with constant velocity unless acted upon by some
force.
 A body at rest remains at rest unless acted upon by some force.
 (ii) An object's acceleration is directly proportional to the object's mass
(F=ma)
 (iii) To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction

 Law of Gravity:
 The gravitational force between 2 bodies is
proportional to the product of their masses and
inversely proportional to the square of the distance
between them

 Invented Calculus
Robert Hooke (1635 - 1703)
 Natural philosopher, inventor

 Robert Hooke is one of the most neglected

natural philosophers of all time. The inventor of:
 the iris diaphragm in cameras,
 the universal joint used in motor vehicles,
 the balance wheel in a watch
 the originator of the word 'cell' in biology

 Best known for Hooke's Law

 “stress is proportional to strain”
Christian Huygens (1629-1695)
 Improved telescope and resolved numerous astronomical
questions

 Invented pendulum clock and balance clocks to improve the

measurement of time

 worked on wave theory of light

 discovered polarized light

 deduced laws of reflection and refraction

 Huygen's Principal: “ Every point on a wave front can be

regarded as a new source of waves”
 The first scientifically studied
earthquake
The Lisbon Earthquake (Nov 1, 1755)
 Probably magnitude 9 with a 3 large tsunamis, thousands killed
 epicentre 200 km off SW corner of Portugal
 destroyed the city of Lisbon, Portugal
 tsunami's struck England and were detected across the Atlantic
Ocean in North America
 Its widespread physical effects aroused a wave of scientific
interest and research into earthquakes.

(From geology.about.com/library/
bl/bllisbon1755eq.htm)
The Lisbon Earthquake
J. Mitchel (1761) and J. Drijhout (1765)
 Noted the separation of the earthquake source from the
effects that it produced

 proposed that the distant motion was caused by a wave

propagating from a specific location.

 Mitchel suggested that the vibrations close to the source

were related to wave propagating through the elasticity of
the rocks

 Suggested the cause of the earthquake itself was caused

by water vaporized by sudden contact with underground
fires.
Earthquake Studies – before 1880
 first systematic catalogue of shocks - Van Hoff and A Perry
 First intensity scale - P. Eagen (1828)
 followed by M De Rossi, F. Forel and G. Mercalli intensity
scales
 first isoseismal map - J. Noggerath (1847)
 C. Lyell - showed earthquakes could cause vertical motions
over large areas
 Studied the 1819 Rann and Cutch earthquake in India
 1822 and 1835 Chulian earthquakes
 1855 Wairrarapa earthquake in New Zealand
 R. Mallet (1810-1881 ) Irish geologist and engineer
 Constructed one of the most complete earthquake catalogues
to date
 Made an attempt to measure seismic velocities using explosive
sources
 believed earthquakes were caused by the sudden expansion of
steam as water met hot rock
Earthquake Locations - Mallet,
1868.
Earthquake Studies – before 1880
Early seismic instruments
 1856: L. Palmiero built a seismoscope that also recorded
time
 1873: Verbeck first pendulum observations
 1875: Cecchi, Italy built first seismometer

 1880: Wegner constructed a common-pendulum

seismometer which did not write records.
 Wegner detected 27 earthquakes.

None of above instruments worked very well

 J. Milne, J. Ewing and T. Gray developed first successful

working seismographs in 1880-1885 period
Earthquake studies after 1880
 Ewing: used a horizontal pendulum seismometer
to detect earthquakes

Circular smoked paper record obtained by Ewing's

seismograph of a local earthquake in Japan on March 8,
1881.
 Milne and Gray (1881) conducted experiments
on the propagation of elastic waves
 artificial sources such as dynamite blasts.
 obtained an apparent velocity of 500 feet /sec.
 The farthest station was 400 feet from the source.
First recording of a distant earthquake
April 18, 1889
 In Potsdam, Germany, E. von-Rebeur-Pashwitz had built a
sensitive horizontal pendulum seismograph for measuring
tidal tilts, his interest was primarily astronomical.
 The figure below is an engraving of the recording he made
of the 1989 earthquake in Japan
Seismology milestones (1880-)
Waves
 Lord Rayleigh (1842-1919) - Predicted Rayleigh waves
(1885)
 Richard Oldham (1900) - identified P waves, S waves and
Rayleigh waves from records of the 1897 Assam
earthquake
 A E. H. Love (1863-1940) - predicted existence of Love
waves (1911)

Earth structure
 Oldham (1906) - confirmed the existence of the Earth's
core
 A. Mohorovicic (1909) - Discovered the Moho from analysis
of data at relatively short distance from earthquake (the
Kulpa Valley earthquake in Croatia)
 I. Lehman (1936) showed that the core has a solid inner
core.
Earth structure
H. Jeffereys (1891-1989) and K. Bullen (1906-
1976)
 Used large volumes of data and improved
analysis of epicentre locations and derived new
standard earth model
 The Jeffreys-Bullen Seismological Tables (1940)
 Showed earth nearly spherical symmetrical with
only a few discontinuities.
 Showed core-mantle boundary separated a solid
mantle from a liquid core.
Jeffreys-Bullen
Earth Model
Earthquake mechanism (1911-
1950)
 1911: Reid's strain rebound theory - earthquakes related to
faults

 1917: T. Shida first to show that the first motions could be

divided into quadrants separated by nodal lines

 1923: Nekano provided the first theoretical treatment of the fault

source mechanism

 1935: Richter developed the Richter magnitude scale

 Other pioneers in this area :

 Byerly, S. Nakamura, S. Kunitomi, H.Honda, M. Ishimoto and Keilis
Borok

 Arguments both for single couple and double-couple sources were

presented.

 J. Hodgson attempted to use S waves to distinguish between the

double-and single couple sources.
Seismic Vault in 1950s

Data is stored on
photographic paper
and sent to others using
microfilm
The computer and seismology
The practical computer (1960 onwards)
 The tape recorder--- analogue, then digital--- reel to reel, cassettes,
Exabyte etc
 Punch cards and paper tape replaced with interactive terminal - 1980

 Personal computers 1985 -

 GPS and satellite communication -
 The internet 1995-

Memory-- diskettes, CD , DVD, flash sticks, 300 gigabyte drives

 The memory of 1 DVD =approximately that of 4000 diskettes
 The slide-rule was replaced with the pocket calculator in 1972

Maximum precision – 3 significant figures Price $395 US in 1972

New tools for seismologists
 Finite difference analysis
 Synthetic Seismograms
 Ray tracing
 Numerous Inversion techniques
 Digital filtering numerous filters --- band-pass, wave
shaping, stacking , velocity etc

 Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) --- Cooley Tukey 1967 ---

 reduce the number of computations from N* N to NlogN

 Example-- get the spectrum of a seismic trace 60 seconds

long sampled at 100 samples/sec
 N= 6000 - N*N= 36,000,000
- NlogN= 22,669
 The FFT is 1,588 times faster in this example
The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
 1963 – The limited test-ban treaty signed

 Funding resulted in improved instrumentation around the

world
 This was particularly for the World Wide Standardized
Seismic Network (WWSSN)
 120 standardized recording stations located world-wide

 Numerous seismic arrays were also set up around the world

 e.g. WRA Australia, YKA Canada, GBA India, ESK Scotland,
NORSAR Norway

 ESSN seismic network of 100 stations in Soviet Union and

eastern block

 Late 1970s --- Analogue to digital conversion begun

WRA, GBA, YKA Seismic Arrays Constructed in 1960s

Upper mantle (400 and 650 km) discontinuities detected in

the 1960s from analysis of array data
Further milestones in seismology
 1966: Keiiti Aki defines seismic moment
 A physical measure of the magnitude of an earthquake.
 Mo = Area * slip * rigidity

 1969-72: Apollo astronauts place a seismometer on

he Moon, and the first "moonquakes" are registered.

 1977: Hiroo Kanamori establishes the moment

magnitude scale
 A measure of earthquake magnitude based on seismic
moment.
Plate tectonic theory
1984: The US National Science Foundation and US
Geological Survey provide funding for a new, digital seismic
network, the GSN. to replace the aging WWSSN.
1996: The International Data Center is established in Vienna
and seismic monitoring is done through the International
Monitoring System (IMS). The IMS makes use of many
stations of the GSN.
New developments – Passive
experiments
Passive experiments
 EarthScope
 400 portable 3
component broadband
instruments on a
regular grid
 400 portable 3
component short-period
and broadband
seismographs and 2000
single channel high-
frequency recorders
 Permanent array of
broadband 3 component
stations across the
country as part of the
USGS Advanced
National Seismic
System
 Message From the SSA - April 14, 2006
 “ The complete archive of BSSA from 1911-2006
is now available online”

 “In conjunction with our 100th anniversary, SSA

is pleased to announce that all issues of the
Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
(BSSA) back from Volume 1 Number 1 (March
1911) are now available (and searchable) on the
World Wide Web through Geoscience World.”