"I think that's probably what you would do? Is that right?....Petra"

Petra

We're all different. I usually try to find a unique experiment that can isolate one aspect of earthquakes: triggering by the tides, the effect of time since the last rupture on the friction, a measurement of the fault zone, a sample of the structure of the core-mantle boundary.

But there are tectonic seismologists, Chris is one, who can focus on a particular fault and seismic swarm and start guessing about the entirety of what's going on.

Often that involves waiting for some details to reveal themselves, usually we never figure out exactly why there was a particular swarm, but only us insiders know that we're just guessing.

John