Earthquake Conjugate Point

Is there on the Earth’s surface the “Earthquake Conjugate Point” determined seismically?

Dear Valentin,
I’m not very familiar with that term, could you tell us more about it please?

No !

Do you mean a triple point where 3 plate boundaries come together (don’t think there are ever more than 3)? That would be interesting to look at from a relative movement and earthquake activity point of view (or maybe not if not much actually happens - I haven’t noticed one before / am writing this before researching - always dangerous!). Regards Dave

I can’t work out what that could mean.

Every earthquake will have an antipode - the point on the Earth’s surface geometrically opposite the focus of the earthquake - but that’s not likely to be very interesting, because the inhomogeneities of the Earth’s surface (and sub-surface) geology would prevent accurate focussing of earthquake wave energy at the antipode. Instead the energy would be dissipated over hundreds of km of distance and several hours of time (between the first-arrival of through-core waves and the last arrival of surface waves.

Is this perhaps something that Google Translate (“other translation engines are available”) threw back at you?

The Earthquake Conjugate Point (ECP) is defined as the intersection between the orbit of the satellite and the magnetic field line (red curve) of which the foot point at the Earth’s surface corresponds to the earthquake epicenter.

Source publication

1 Like

Well, it does answer the question. Not very helpfully though. The geomagnetic field is produced by large currents in the outer core of the Earth (probably driven by convection currents as the core cools. That’s around 3000km (minimum) from the region of the Earth’s interior where the rocks are cool enough to sustain the stress differences necessary to produce an earthquake. There’s no reason to think that the location of an earthquake focus and the magnetic field generated several thousand km away vertically.
Unless you have a chain of argument to suggest such a link. Over to you for that one.

2 Likes