Q: What did one earthquake say to the other earthquake?

A: It’s all your fault!

I apologize for that painfully bad joke, but I’m willing to bet that downtown Portland is chock-full of such groaners this week. Why? Because the seismologists are in town!

That’s right — the Seismological Society of America’s annual meeting is underway in Portland. They’ve got a ton of topics to cover and they’re even headed out on a few field trips.

As an admitted disaster geek, this conference sounds both fascinating and fun. For example, they’re having an earthquake debate, taking on issues including the predictability of earthquakes, the distribution of earthquake sizes on major faults, the role of Coulomb stress change [I have no idea what that is] in earthquake triggering, and many others. There’s also a session on earthquake forecasting and even the intriguingly titled, “Time Reversal in Geophysics” which I’m pretty sure is related to the science behind Hot Tub Time Machine.

So as you’re out and about this weekend, please make sure to say hi to our seismological friends. I’m sure they’re a very down to earth bunch.

P.S. Interested in hearing what the visiting experts had to say about earthquakes in Oregon? Check out the OPB News story…