Chapter 5: Theories and Ghost Quakes

Experts from around the world offered their theories, debating the cause of the quake.

A dozen accents collided. Some argued for superplume activity, others for deep-mantle convection anomalies. I mostly listened, feeling out of my league.

I said nothing, staring at the data on the screen, absentmindedly doodling in my notebook.

My doodles turned into jagged lines—cracks, maybe, or mountain peaks. My pen left little indentations from pressing too hard.

The focal depth matched our center’s observations, so it was likely accurate.

Dr. Reynolds gave me a subtle nod across the table. We’d double-checked those numbers three times before boarding the plane.

In academic terms, earthquakes deeper than 186 miles are called deep-focus earthquakes.

My first geology professor used to call them "ghost quakes"—rare, strange, and poorly understood.

The cause of deep-focus earthquakes remains a mystery.

I remembered late-night arguments with my college friends over the nature of deep Earth mechanics. Now, the stakes were no longer theoretical.

The deepest earthquake in recorded history was the Sulawesi quake in Indonesia on June 29, 1934, with a focal depth of 447 miles.

A black-and-white slide popped up—crumbling villages, terrified faces. It was hard to connect that ancient disaster to what we were seeing now.

Normally, by the time energy from such a deep quake reaches the surface, most of it has dissipated, greatly reducing its destructive power.

I mentally calculated attenuation factors. This event broke every rule in the book.

But this Antarctic earthquake was staggeringly destructive, nearly obliterating the surface.

I wrote in my notebook: “WHY?” and underlined it three times.

So, just how enormous was the energy released at the focus?

Nobody wanted to say the number aloud. But the implication was clear: it was enough to shatter everything we thought we knew.