Wedging California Apart Along The San Andreas Fault

BLDGBLOG writes about research being done along the San Andreas Fault in the Carrizo plain, in an effort to understand historical seismicity along the fault. The paper has been published in the September issue of Geology. The story has been making news as results suggest that major earthquakes since the 1300's have been occurring at approximately century long intervals before the last big one in 1857....

I love BLDGBLOG's imaginative scenario of the consequences of geologists digging deep trenches to study earth movements:

Imagine a rogue, university-funded team of geologists researching ever-lower levels of the earth, forcing themselves downward with separating devices that pin open rocky wounds to split whole landmasses along unanticipated faultlines. Using these tools—terrain deformation grenades gone linear—they create islands in the earth's crust, like walled castles of geology, carving out new blocks in the landscape.

Maybe its time for a sequel to Alistair Maclean's Goodbye California.