ScienceNOW: Taming the infamous San Andreas fault with buried nuclear bombs or deep grease injections is the stuff of science fiction, but Mother Nature herself may be defusing a major fault in Taiwan, China.Researchers are now showing that typhoons passing over the island have been triggering quakes that harmlessly release fault strain over hours and days rather than destructively over seconds or minutes. And these slow earthquakes, they speculate, may be staving off a big one.
The finding that the Saturnian moon may host layers of icy slush instead of a global ocean could change how planetary scientists think about other icy moons as well.
Modeling the shapes of tree branches, neurons, and blood vessels is a thorny problem, but researchers have just discovered that much of the math has already been done.
January 29, 2026 12:52 PM
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