The blue arrows on the map splay out like uncooked spaghetti tossed into a pot as geophysicist Jonathan Bedford presses play.
Ten years after the March 11, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake ¡ª which upended long-held views about where megaquakes were likely to strike ¡ª scientists like Bedford, a researcher with the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam, are developing new tools to better understand the threat, while others are digging deep into the past in a search for geological clues.
Each arrow on Bedford¡¯s animated analysis represents tiny movements over time ¡ª most at a speed of well under 1 millimeter per day ¡ª of the Japanese archipelago, as detected by the thousands of highly accurate GPS stations that dot one of the world¡¯s most seismically active countries. Red circles spring up now and then to mark an earthquake.
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