Hidden Movement Found Beneath California !! Is the BIG ONE Getting Closer?

[00:00:00]San Andreas Fault, the big one, that is overdue and that is locked and loaded.

[00:00:04]And when I tell you that they have detected a silent movement that nobody knew it was happening and that it released some stress where the fault slipped without people noticing, but it also shifted stress towards nearby parts of the San Andreas Fault including the transition between the creeping and the locked sections.

[00:00:31]Sounds a little bit complicated. What would you say? Would you say like, "Oh, well, let me tell you what has actually happened, what they discovered." And that is highly, highly important.

[00:00:43]Artificial intelligence and I always said it, I said, "We will look at data that we have and with AI, we will find faster and we will detect smaller things that have been hidden to our eyes." So, with AI, they have revealed something that is hidden inside the San Andreas Fault. So, the fault was moving.

[00:01:06]So, there was no major earthquake.

[00:01:08]That's the interesting thing. It was moving without a major earthquake. Now, your first thought will be, "Oh, that is great. So, it has released stress. Does that mean the big one's not coming?"

[00:01:20]Haha, guys, unfortunately, um no. There was no violent shaking.

[00:01:26]Yes, most people at the surface would never have known anything happened, but instruments that are buried underground recorded tiny changes in the surrounding rock and it especially in Parkfield. And the San Andreas Fault is one of the most surveilled, looked at faults. So, when artificial intelligence searched through years of measurements, it discovered dozens of short, short movements that had been hiding inside the background noise off the San Andreas Fault that is always there.

[00:02:03]And after these silent movements occurred, weak earthquakes increased deeper beneath the fault.

[00:02:11]So that means that silent movement did not simply release pressure and make the danger disappear. It basically changed where the stress was sitting.

[00:02:25]So and now that we know that this exists, can we know better where the stress is and what it is doing? Let me explain this to you.

[00:02:35]So what they found, the silent movement appears to have transferred some of the stress towards nearby parts of the San Andreas Fault including the dangerous transition where the freely moving section meets rock that is still locked.

[00:02:54]So does that mean California's big one is about to happen? No one can honestly say that. Everyone expects it.

[00:03:03]Everyone expects it. It can happen at any time.

[00:03:07]But scientists have now shown that the San Andreas is quietly, without us realizing, rearranging the stress between earthquakes and that movement can wake up other parts of the fault system. So right now, everyone said yeah, it's locked and loaded in the southern part near the Salton Sea, San Diego. So this is where we expect the fault to rupture first.

[00:03:35]Is that still the case? Can it completely surprise us because it's changing its internal stress? Where is it?

[00:03:44]So that discovery that they made was made near Parkfield in Central California. And Parkfield sits on a very unusual section of the San Andreas Fault. Basically, north of this area, much of the fault is creeping. That means San Andreas Fault, I want to say that is a strike-slip fault, right? So, that means the two sides slowly slide past each other without waiting for one enormous earthquake. So, they don't seem to be locked and loaded and then suddenly slipped with the boom, the big one that is means she's easy sitting the fizzy, right? So, south of Parkfield, that's a different story.

[00:04:30]South of Parkfield, the fault becomes increasingly locked. So, the plates continue trying to slide past each other to move, but friction holds the fault together. So, the surrounding rock bends because of that and stores elastic energy, almost like like a spring being slowly tightened.

[00:04:56]Parkfield lies close to the boundary between these two behaviors. One side moves relatively freely, the other side can remain stuck and can accumulate the energy that is required for the big one, for a very damaging earthquake. So, these newly detected movements they have a name. They're called slow slip events.

[00:05:25]So, that scientific phrase sounds complicated, but the idea beneath that lies beneath it or behind it is actually very simple. So, during a normal earthquake, we know parts of a fault basically suddenly breaks loose and slides within seconds and boof, right? That's a rapid rapid movement. It sends powerful vibrations through the ground, and I'm showing you this video here. Again, this happened during the 7.7, was it 7.8, Myanmar earthquake, first time caught on camera, how a strike-slip fault moves. Look to the right of the picture, right of that gate. There's so much going on. Concrete is breaking, tower is falling, tree is falling, but look where the what the land does. This is what we're talking about here. This is what the San Andreas fault can do.

[00:06:18]So, slow slip, it's a different story. During a slow slip, the fault also moves, but it moves gradually, not like in the video, boof.

[00:06:31]So, the the Parkfield events that they have discovered, they lasted between approximately 25 to 100 minutes.

[00:06:42]So, not like within seconds.

[00:06:45]And because the movement unfolded so slowly, it did not produce the usual strong seismic waves {slash} earthquakes that that are associated with such a move, creating an an ordinary earthquake. It was so slow.

[00:07:03]I mean, still, if I tell you where you live, right underneath you, the San Andreas fault was moving, slipping for 25 to 100 minutes, sounds not good. Sounds a little bit scary. So, this was real fault movement, guys.

[00:07:20]Really, it was real fault movement. It was just without the violent shaking.

[00:07:25]So, the researchers, now, they studied measurements that they collected between 2009 and 2016. They said, "Hey, let's look at the old data. Maybe something like that happened there, too. Or can we find what happened in that time period, right?" And they used devices that they called borehole strain meters. So, a strain meter does not simply listen for shaking. Um it measures basically tiny changes in the shape of the rock around it. It can detect whether the crust is being like stretched, um squeezed, or sheared.

[00:07:59]And these instruments were installed roughly 150 m, that's roughly 500 ft, underground where they could detect extremely small deforma- deformation happening near the San Andreas Fault.

[00:08:13]So, the problem is with these measurements that um they also contain tides, atmospheric pressure changes, long-term trends, and instrument noise. So, each day that they measured contained tens of thousands of measurements, huge data pool, making like the smallest tectonic signals difficult to separate from everything else. But, here is AI.

[00:08:43]You create an algorithm, basically a game plan, tell the system what to look for, and it is able, in a very, very short period of time, to look at a large amount of data and find the smallest variation and distinguish this from the background noise and find the fault movement. So, the artificial intelligence system, the algorithm was trained to recognize repeating shapes inside that mountain of data. So, it did not predict where an earthquake would happen, of course, but it grouped together measurements that did show similar deformation patterns. And then the researchers inspected the detections and removed signals that appeared to be like instrument problems or unrelated disturbances. And then what they found is amazing, but also unnerving, I have to say, because it shows us that the San Andreas Fault is doing much more than we thought we thought before. They found, and now listen to the number, 92 92 slow slip events.

[00:10:06]71 had previously been identified through manual examination. The artificial intelligence system uncovered an additional 21 that were missing from the original catalog. And 14 of those newly discovered events were also visible on separate instruments that basically directly measure the surface creep. And that supports, that's the interesting part, that supports the conclusion that the fault had genuinely moved. It had moved.

[00:10:40]So, the events appeared to occur within the shallowest area, within the shallowest 4 km, that's approximately 2 and 1/2 mi beneath the surface. So, not very deep down.

[00:10:58]Most moved in the normal direction that is expected along the San Andreas Fault, right?

[00:11:05]The San Andreas Fault is a right lateral fault. So, that means when someone stands on one side and looks across it, the opposite moves towards the right.

[00:11:17]So, that movement, and that's interesting, it was tiny if we compare it to like a major rupture, of course, right? But it is still a physical shift along the actual fault.

[00:11:33]Let that sink in. It is a movement.

[00:11:38]And of course, now that's the critical question that I mentioned at the beginning, and I know that you will ask that question. Did that movement release stress? Or did it increase the danger?

[00:11:50]That's the interesting part. Um the answer is it can do both, unfortunately. It depending on which part of the fault is examined. So, when a section of a fault slips, it releases some of the strain, of course, that had accumulated directly on that small patch. In that limited area where it slips. So, we have less elastic energy that is that might remain available for a future earthquake.

[00:12:23]But, the problem with energy is the energy does not simply vanish. So, movement in one area of the fault changes the forces that are basically acting on the surrounding areas of the fault. So, one patch can relax while the movement pushes, pulls, or twists an adjacent patch of the San Andreas Fault.

[00:12:48]So, imagine I'll give you an example. You have like several boxes that are tightly pressed together. And so, when one box suddenly slides in a forward direction, let's say, um the the pressure directly behind that box decreases, right? It decreases. But, the sliding box can press harder against the next box in line.

[00:13:14]Right?

[00:13:16]And fault stress behaves in a similar way.

[00:13:20]So, the slow slip events may have relieved stress on the shallow creeping section, while transferring a temporary stress change through neighboring fault zones.

[00:13:32]And researchers found evidence that this transfer was actually affecting the San Andreas Fault. So, after the slow slip events, the number of low-frequency earthquakes increased.

[00:13:47]So, low-frequency, these are not large earthquakes that that come with a strong shaking. They're weak, they're repetitive failures um occurring much deeper in the crust, and around Parkfield um the low-frequency earthquakes that are examined in this study occurred roughly 16 to 28 um kilometers deep. That's 10 to 17 mi underground. So, they may represent tiny brittle patches breaking inside a larger region that is otherwise slipping more slowly.

[00:14:23]What does that mean?

[00:14:25]If I say that in simple words, the deep fault basically has or contains small stuck spots.

[00:14:34]So, when stress changes around them, some of those spots crack.

[00:14:41]So, the increase of these earthquakes was the clearest on the day right after the slow slip event. But, the low-frequency earthquake activity was also elevated during the slow slip event and the following 2 days. And if we look at that timing, this is not coincidence.

[00:14:59]So, this suggests to us that the shallow movement changed indeed the stress conditions deeper down inside the San Andreas Fault. And that's important because that where where the dangerous part lies.

[00:15:17]So, basically the shallow and the deep activity were separated by many kilometers or miles, but they were still mechanically connected through the fault system.

[00:15:30]So, when that study now says, "Okay, slow slip modulates seismicity." That means the silent movement altered the rate or the timing of later earthquake activity. And that is significant. Really think about what that means. It altered the rate or the timing of later earthquake activity, and that can go in both directions. So, when the study says, "Slow slip potentially promotes seismic activity."

[00:16:07]We have no evidence that does mean that does that means a large earthquake may become inevitable.

[00:16:14]It only says the stress change may make certain small fault patches more likely to fail than then they were before the movement occurred. But we do know that small patches, that shaking, can trigger a bigger locked and loaded section.

[00:16:34]Basically, a little bit like a domino effect. This could trigger the big fault, big one.

[00:16:42]Doesn't have to. That connection, by the way, was the strongest for low frequency earthquakes. Researchers found no clear connection with tremor and only a possible weak relationship with ordinary earthquakes. So, again, this was technical. What does that mean for California's feared big one?

[00:17:07]So, the study, unfortunately guys, I have to tell you does not give us a percentage, a likelihood, when, how big.

[00:17:16]No.

[00:17:18]It does not show that one of these 92 events basically started the countdown to a major San Andreas rupture. Does not show that the fracture or the fault is currently um accelerating in July 2026 because um the measurements that they analyzed were from 2009 to 2016.

[00:17:41]Um and the events were detected near Parkfield, not along the entire length of the San Andreas fault. But, I mean, that's the area that they looked at, right?

[00:17:54]And it certainly already changes the picture of how earthquake danger develops.

[00:17:59]Maybe they find something like this in other areas of the fault. And usually, scientists divide a fault basically into simple categories. One area is creeping, another area is locked, and the locked section is basically where the serious danger builds. They're telling us it's the southern part. So, the new evidence shows us that these areas do not behave independently.

[00:18:27]And that's a little bit of a shocker.

[00:18:29]So, movement inside the creeping section can send a stress disturbance towards the transition zone beside the locked section.

[00:18:38]So, that new research paper specifically, I've read it for you guys, it specifically describes a temporary transfer of stress from the creeping region towards adjacent areas, particularly the boundary between creeping and locked fault behavior. And that boundary is is really the most important part, it deserves a lot of attention, because this is exactly where the movement can encounter resistance.

[00:19:09]So, a A slip event, a small silent, how they call it, silent slip event, does of course not contain enough energy to become California's big one by itself.

[00:19:20]The concern is whether repeated movements influence the larger locked system over time or whether the particular stress change could eventually help push a fault patch that is already close to failure. And we know it is close to failure. It's overdue.

[00:19:38]It's locked and loaded. Could it give it? Is that what will eventually give it the last push? That new study cannot answer that yet. But it shows us that this connection exists and that is huge.

[00:19:54]Does not reveal unfortunately how close the locked and loaded section is to breaking, but scientists are telling us they expect it to be close.

[00:20:04]And the researchers also discovered something else that is interesting. Um that these slow silent movements, they follow a size versus duration pattern similar to regular earthquakes. So, we call this a moment duration scaling.

[00:20:25]Moment is essentially a measurement of like how the fault moved, how large the moving area was, and how strong the surrounding rock was.

[00:20:37]So, the finding does not mean if we have a silent slow slip event that this is transforming into a major earthquake. Um but it means that slow movement and violent earthquakes may belong to the same broad family of fault behavior rather than being completely separate processes.

[00:21:00]That's the interesting finding here. So, the difference is how rapidly the the releases its movement and energy. At one hand it creeps almost continuously and then come short silent slip events and at the violent end we suspect it's the southern end, the fault accelerates into a normal earthquake and releases damaging seismic waves.

[00:21:26]So, the San Andreas fault can operate across that entire range. We know that now.

[00:21:34]We're not there yet that artificial intelligence, that algorithm, high-tech fast computers can detect the big one.

[00:21:44]But it what it has done already may be more important for how we understand the San Andreas fault over the long term.

[00:21:52]It has exposed physical movements that conventional search has missed even at Parkfield, one of the most closely monitored earthquake zones in the world.

[00:22:05]So, I think that this technique will eventually help scientists to watch silent stress changes um almost as they happen instead of discovering them years later. Because when we know they're happening right now, we can be on alert.

[00:22:25]For now I have to tell you the message of this new finding is uncomfortable, but also clear.

[00:22:32]And I I say it again, the creeping section of the San Andreas fault is not disconnected from the dangerous locked section.

[00:22:42]When one part moves, stress can be rearranged somewhere else.

[00:22:47]Most of these movements, as we see they end quietly, thankfully.

[00:22:52]But they have now confirmed that even deeper patches can be disturbed by the silent movement and that they can increase small earthquake activity And that activity could loosen something that's locked and loaded.

[00:23:07]Can pass the stress along.

[00:23:09]So, very interesting, guys.

[00:23:12]I hope you found that interesting. And check out what just happened at the underwater volcano in the Bismarck Sea, Titan Ridge. That mysterious thing that nobody really sees, but we know it's there because we see smoke plumes, discolored water, pumice.

[00:23:28]And now we had a 6.4 earthquake in that Bismarck Sea region.

[00:23:33]Very, very interesting geological region because a lot is happening there. So, does that trigger that underwater volcano again? And since we're not seeing what's happening there, how that earthquake might have damaged the underwater volcano? That's the risk. Can always collapse, crater collapse, cone collapse, and can send dangerous tsunamis. So, check out the video. It's really, really interesting. I'll see you there. Bye-bye.