Professor Dean Whitman, of the Department of Earth and Environment, studies earthquakes. He answers questions about the geophysics of the destructive event.

Not all earthquake faults behave the same. Some stick and snap, causing earthquakes. Others move slowly over time. For years, the leading explanation for slow-moving faults has been that high-pressure ...

On Wednesday evening, Venezuela was hit with its largest tremors in more than a century — toppling buildings and claiming more than 100 lives. The event, according to the US Geological Survey, was a ...

It appears the two big earthquakes in Venezuela that occurred in rapid succession may have involved two separate fault lines.

A magnitude 4.1 earthquake was reported at 9:54 a.m. Tuesday less than a mile from Paso Robles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The earthquake occurred eight miles from Atascadero, 19 miles ...

It’s been a jiggly week in the east San Francisco Bay Area. The USGS recorded 120 earthquakes all centered within a few miles of the city of San Ramon. Most were far too small to be felt, but six made ...

What could the next mega-earthquake on California's notorious San Andreas fault look like? Would it be a repeat of 1857, when an earthquake estimated at magnitude 7.7 to 7.9 ruptured the fault from ...

Today at about 11:30am local time, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck off the coast of Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula in the country's far east. Originating at a depth of roughly 20 kilometres, today's ...

Hundreds of millions of people live along coastlines that trace the Pacific Ocean, where the planet’s most active seismic belt produces roughly 90% of all recorded earthquakes. That single statistic, ...

Venezuela was struck with a pair of deadly earthquakes Wednesday evening and Thursday morning that brought significant ...

When an earthquake hits, you have only seconds to act. And if you don’t know exactly what you should do—or you have incorrect information about earthquake safety—you could accidentally be putting ...