Geologists discover where the energy goes during the earthquake

Electronic photographic examination is highlighted by an area of ​​rocks that have declined during an earthquake resulting from the laboratory. The “flowing” central area is part of the melted rock and turned into glass due to extreme friction heating. Credit: AGU Progress (2025). Doi: 10.1029/2025AV001683

The earthquake generated by the earthquake is only a small part of the total energy released. The earthquake can also be born a flash of heat, along with a domino -like fracture of underground rocks. But exactly the amount of energy that comes into each of these three operations is very difficult, if not impossible, to measure it in this field.

Now, geologists have followed the Massachusetts Institute of Energy Technology that is released by the “earthquake laboratory” – its natural seismic analogues that are carefully operated in a controlled laboratory environment. For the first time, they estimated the full energy budget for such earthquakes, in terms of the energy part that enters heat, shaking and breaking.

They found that only about 10 % of the laboratory earthquake capacity caused physical shaking. Smaller part – less than 1 % – explodes in dismantling rocks and creating new surfaces. The overwhelming part of the earthquake energy – at 80 % on average – is transmitted to heating the direct area around the epicenter. In fact, the researchers noted that the laboratory earthquake could produce a hot temperature enough to dissolve the surrounding materials and convert them shortly into liquid melting.

Geologists also found that the earthquake's energy budget depends on the date of distortion of the region – the degree in which the rocks turned and disturbed by the previous tectonic suggestions. Equipment fractures that produce heat, shaking and rock cracking can be transformed depending on what the region has seen in the past.

“The date of deformation-mainly, remembers the rock-really affects the extent of the destruction of the earthquake,” says Daniel Ortega Aroyo, a student of graduate studies in the Department of Earth Sciences, Air Sciences and Planets. “This date affects many of the properties of materials in the rock, and to some extent dictate how it will slip.”

The team laboratory earthquake is a simplified representation of what is happening during a natural earthquake. On the road, their results can help seismologists to predict the possibility of earthquakes in areas exposed to seismic events. For example, if scientists have an idea of ​​the vibration of an earthquake that has been created in the past, they may be able to estimate the degree that the earthquake's energy also affected the rocks deeply underground by melting or dismantling it. This, in turn, can reveal how weak the area is to future earthquakes.

“We can never reproduce the complexity of the Earth, so we have to isolate the physics of what is happening, in these laboratory earthquakes,” says Matj B, Associate Professor of Geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “We hope to understand these operations and try to extract them with nature.”

I reported PEč (PECK “) and Ortega-Arroyo about its results on August 28 in the Augu Advances magazine. The authors of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are HoGY O'Ghafari, Camilla Cattania, along with Zheng Gong, Roger Fu at Harvard University, OHL and OHL and Oliver Plümper at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Under the surface

Earthquakes driven by energy that are stored in rocks for millions of years. Also, the Tktuni grinding is grinding slowly against each other, stressing by dandruff. When the rocks are pushed through their physical power, they can suddenly slip along a narrow area, creating a geological error. While the rocks slip on both sides of the error, they produce seismic waves rippled outward and up.

We are mainly aware of the earthquake energy in the form of earth vibration, which can be measured using earthquake measuring devices and other ground tools. But the other two main forms of earthquake energy – heater and underground cracking – are not largely accessible with current techniques.

“Unlike the weather, where we can see daily patterns and measure a number of relevant variables, it is very difficult to do this in the depth of the Earth,” says Ortega Aroyo. “We do not know what is happening to the rocks themselves, and the time offers that earthquakes are repeated within the rift area in the timelines from the century to a tendency, which makes any kind of impartial prediction a challenge.”

For an idea of ​​how the earthquake energy is divided, and how this energy budget can affect the seismic risks of the region, he and PEč went to the laboratory. Over the past seven years, the PEč Group has developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Styles and Simulation Simulation Simulation of Events, in the microscope, trying to understand how earthquakes can play in justice.

“We are focusing on what really happens on a small scale, as we can control many aspects of failure and try to understand it before we can do any scaling of nature,” says Ortega Aroyo.

Simple planning shows a sample of rocks that are subject to a laboratory earthquake experience, which releases energy in three forms: cracking and dilution (decrease in the size of the grains); Fricular heating and seismic shake. Credit: AGU Progress (2025). Doi: 10.1029/2025AV001683

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Microshakes

For their new study, the team created mini laboratory earthquakes that mimic the seismic slip of rocks along the rift area. They worked with small granite samples, which represent rocks in the seismic layer – the geological area of ​​the continental crust where earthquake usually arises. They wear granite in a soft powder and mix broken granite with a more accurate powder than magnetic molecules, which they used as a kind of inner temperature. (The strength of the magnetic field of the particle will change in response to the volatile volatility.)

The researchers put samples of crushed granite – each about 10 millimeters and 1 millimeters of thin – between two small coaches and drew the group in a gold jacket. Then they applied a strong magnetic field to direct the magnetic molecules of the powder in the same initial direction and to the same field. They justified that any change in the direction of the particles and the strength of the field after that should be a sign of the amount of heat that the region witnessed as a result of any seismic event.

Once the samples are prepared, the team put it one by one in a device created by request that the researchers set to apply the pressure steadily, similar to the pressures facing the rocks in the seismic layer of the Earth, about 10 to 20 kilometers below the surface. They used dedicated Piezoelectric sensors, which were developed by the participating author O'Ghaffari, which attached to either side of a sample to measure any vibrator because it increased the pressure on the sample.

Notice that at some pressure, some samples retreated, resulting in a microscopic seismic event similar to an earthquake. By analyzing magnetic particles in the samples after the truth, they got an estimate of the extent of temporarily heating each sample – a method developed in cooperation with the Roger Fu Laboratory at Harvard University.

They also estimated the amount of experience of each experienced sample, using measurements from a compressor sensor and digital models. The researchers also examined each sample under a microscope, in various effects, to assess how the size of granite granules change – both and how many grains have stormed smaller pieces, for example.

Of all these measurements, the team enables the power budget to estimate every laboratory earthquake. On average, they found that about 80 % of the earthquake energy interferes with the temperature, while 10 % are born shaking, and less than 1 % go to breaking rocks, or creating new smaller particles.

“In some cases, we saw that, close to the error, the sample moved from room temperature to 1200 degrees Celsius on a microchet issue, and then it immediately cools as soon as the movement stopped,” says Ortega Aroo. “In one sample, we saw that the error moves about 100 microns, which means that the sliding speeds are about 10 meters per second. It moves very quickly, although it does not last very long.”

Researchers suspect that similar operations play in actual earthquakes.

“Our experiences provide an integrated approach that provides one of the most complete views of an earthquake -like bush physics so far,” Biz says. “This will provide evidence of how to improve current earthquake models and mitigate natural risks.”

More information: Daniel Ortega – Arroyo Et Al, “Lab -quicks”: Determine the full energy budget for the failure of the high pressure laboratory, AGU Advances (2025). Doi: 10.1029/2025AV001683

It was presented by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This story has been republished out of courtesy of MIT News (Web.Mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about the research of the Massachusetts Institute for Technology, Innovation and Teaching.

Quote: Geologists discovered where the energy goes during an earthquake (2025, September 16) on September 16, 2025 from https://phys.org/news/2025-09- Geology-Energy-earthquake.html

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