California is divided by a large fault that spans 800 miles. It has been responsible for some of the US's most devastating earthquakes, running north to south through the state.
There are regions in the state that have not experienced the full fury of the fault. It was thought so.
There are signs that the slow and silent section of the famous fault line could have hosted some impressive tremors recently.
The findings of the study should serve as a reason to pay more attention to the activity in central California in the future.
Building codes in California are quite good. Stephen Cox is a geology student at Columbia University in New York.
Work like this helps us figure out what is the biggest possible event, and helps everyone prepare.
There are three distinct boundaries where the Pacific and North American tectonic plates intersect.
The northern- and southern-most sections press together with titanic forces, releasing in bursts only as small sections give way to the pressure.
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake caused thousands of deaths and the 1989 Santa Cruz earthquake caused more than 60 deaths.
Los Angeles County has seen its fair share of death and destruction as nearby sections of fault give way.
There is a quieter boundary between the two boundaries, one where the plates cares at a slow pace of 26 millimeters a year.
There is less risk of a major earthquake occurring with little to force the plates to pause.
There has been no record of a magnitude 6 earthquake in recorded history. There has been no such earthquake in the past 2,000 years.
There is nothing to be concerned about.
The creeping section is a difficult place to do paleoseismology because evidence for earthquakes can be easily erased.
Our planet's crust is a complex mix of geological machinery with a web of connections between boundaries and breaks. Significant changes far off in other areas can be triggered by small changes in quiet, peaceful sections of a fault.
The right geological clap to the north or south could echo through the middle in ways that would allow for a shake-up of the likes we have never seen.
Changes to organic matter caused by friction were used to identify signs of major earthquakes in rocks collected from deep within the central section of the fault.
The team was able to estimate the timing of the quakes by analyzing the ratios of radioactive potassium and argon.
There were signs of earthquakes in a region of rock just over 3 kilometers below the surface. The team estimates the number of tremors to be comparable to the 6.9 magnitude earthquake near Santa Cruz in 1989.
This is the first evidence of a big earthquake in this part of the fault.
Some of the earthquakes happened less than 3 million years ago. Millions of years in the past might seem like ancient history, but Earth isn't quick to change its stripes.
California needs to remain vigilant of the monster that sleeps beneath its feet because it knows that the creeping section of the San Andreas Fault can grind its teeth when forced.
This research was published in a journal.
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