The fault stretches from N.Y. to Alabama and could cause an earthquake with the right mix of ingredients.
For 30 years geologists have been puzzled by a remarkably straight magnetic line that runs between New York and Alabama along the Appalachians.
A more recent aerial magnetic survey of the Alabama end of the line suggests that it’s probably a 500-million-year-old San Andreas-style fault that appears to have slipped 137 miles (220 kilometers) to the right in the distant past.
If so, it’s no surprise that the most dangerous part of the eastern Tennessee seismic zone is right next to part of this magnetic line and has the second-highest earthquake frequency in the eastern United States.
“It’s most likely a strike-slip fault,” said Mark Steltenpohl of the University of Alabama at Auburn. “But it’s all buried.”
The fault is invisible from the surface and there is very little information about it because no one has actually drilled down through it to investigate, Steltenpohl told Discovery News.
And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven. Luke 21:11
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