Earthquake triggering, and why we don’t know where the next big one will strike

As I came through airport security in Connecticut, upon presentation of my California driver’s license, the TSA officer asked me, “Aren’t you folks worried about how that big Japan quake is going to hit you next?” I was glad to be able to tell him that we’re not any more worried than we were before, and that a writer had just made that up. I didn’t ask him where he got that idea, but on my mind already was Simon Winchester’s column in Newsweek magazine on March 13. The article was wrong, and that fact has gotten a lot of traction in the blogosphere—and in real newspapers, if a distinction still exists.