Abstract
Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino (1909-10, p. 355) Prof. G. B. Rizzo has contributed an interesting paper on the velocity with which earth movements occasioned by the earthquake which ruined Messina on December 28, 1908, were propagated to different parts of the world. First he gives in detail the observations made with various types of seismographs at 110 stations. These he sums up in tables, which show for the preliminary tremors or Pi; their followers or P2, and the large waves or P3, the time taken by them to travel from their origin to these various stations, their average superficial velocity, and the velocities with which the two first types of movement may have passed along paths corresponding to chords. The first results are also shown as curves drawn on squared paper, the two ordinates, respectively, referring to time and distance. The greatest distance considered is 10,000 kilometres, or 90 degrees, although the tables give resultapos;s to distances exceeding 18,000 kilometres, or 163 degrees. Dr. Rizzo remarks that none of these curves show the flexure near the epicentrum which Schmidt, like Seebach, has used to determine the depth of the hypocentre. The absence of this is taken by Dr. Rizzo to indicate that the origin of the Messina earthquake was very shallow, a conclusion which I do not think will be shared by all seismologists. Many seismologists will, however, agree with him when he bases the idea of a shallow origin upon the comparatively small area of destructivity.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
MILNE, J. Velocity of Earth Movements Casued by the Messina Earthquake.. Nature 86, 125 (1911). https://doi.org/10.1038/086125a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/086125a0