On Jan. 1, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck the western side of Japan on the Noto Peninsula, killing over 200 people. Japan is prone to earthquakes, including a magnitude 9.1 earthquake in 2011 that triggered a tsunami and killed almost 20,000 people. William Frank, the Victor P. Starr Career Development Professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT, has been studying an earthquake swarm in the region where the most recent earthquake occurred. He explains the difference between subduction earthquakes and earthquake swarms, and why the…
