Earthquakes can sometimes reverse and go back: Study
Turns out, earthquakes aren't always one-way events.
MIT researchers discovered that even on simple, straight faults—not just complicated ones—earthquakes can suddenly reverse and travel back the way they came.
Their simulations show these "boomerang" movements are more common than we thought but often go unnoticed.
Boomerang quakes can intensify shaking
These boomerang quakes can make shaking much stronger in certain spots—sometimes intensifying motion twice within seconds.
As co-author Camilla Cattania puts it, "Buildings would shake more in response," so there's real potential for extra damage.
Big quakes might be riskier than we thought
This happens when friction along the fault changes a few times during a quake, causing stress to build up and then snap backward.
The study also found that you need pretty big earthquakes for this to happen, which means large quakes might be riskier than smaller ones in ways we didn't realize before.