Hi Canie:

I had a post or two on the Mag 8 (nov '01) in China awhile back.

My thinking was that plate tectonics would require the largest eqs along the plate boundaries for maximum energy transfer (as the theory suggests). In other words, every great eq that happened off the plate boundary and in the interior of a plate is a little harder to explain (since relative motion along a fault within a plate should presumably be less than along a plate boundary).

So while the presence of a fault where a great quake happened may be likely, it would still be interesting to see how a plate tectonics-ist explains how/why the event did not happen at or very near a plate boundary.... Just thinking about what the dogma says/suggests....

Is this the quake you were referring to?

.02

• plate map