【学术视频】中国科大赵九章·侯德封大师讲堂 | 斯坦福大学Amos Nur教授

Frank Press in 1975 promised earthquake prediction within 10 years or so. This optimism was based on new concepts that emerged at the time of earthquake mechanics and earthquake geography: stick slip as the earthquake instability, the rebound theory for strain accumulation and release, the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion for rock masses, and earthquake geography-as related to plate boundaries and plate tectonics. Press' promise has not materialized. A key reason is that too many first orders observed aspects of earthquakes remained and still are unexplained or un-accounted for. They were assumed to be of secondary importance: The frequency-magnitude statistics of earthquakes, the occurrence of aftershocks, viscous and other slow deformational behavior of and in the crust and lithosphere, rupture propagation, plate boundary yielding, rebound that cannot mimic the negative of loading, the complexity of fault systems, earthquake migration, actual earthquake geography, and rupture termination (vs. nucleation), etc. In the talk, I review these aspects and specifically look at 3 such unaccounted ones: Block and Stress Rotations, Free surface as a cause for earthquake instability, and Earthquake migration. Besides a review of some fundamental problems the talk illuminates first order areas for future research in earthquake physics.