Earthquakes – natural or human-made?
It is virtually impossible to observe earthquakes where they occur. The earth-quake focuses are located too deep underground and we do not know well enough, where the next one will occur. Artificially generated earthquakes in the BedrettoLab of ETH Zurich allow us to measure and investigate exactly this for-mation process 1,500 meters below the earth’s surface.
Natural or human-made? The answer to this question concerns not only researchers, but also the population living in the vicinity of projects that carry out activities deep under-ground and may trigger perceptible or even damaging earthquakes.
Together with national and international partners, ETH Zurich is investigating in the Bedret-toLab how such human-made earthquakes occur, what impact they have and how they can be controlled in the best possible way. The underground laboratory is located 1,500 meters below the earth’s surface in the middle of a long tunnel connecting the Ticino with the Fur-ka Base Tunnel. The BedrettoLab offers a unique opportunity to artificially generate mil-lions of tiny earthquakes and to observe them precisely where they occur. Usually this is not possible, because the earthquake focus (hypocenter) is always several kilometers away from the nearest measuring instruments.
We take the visitors of Scientifica virtually into the BedrettoLab, explain to them the dif-ferences between natural and human-made earthquakes and show them how quakes can be artificially triggered and measured. In addition, we enable visitors to experience the work and research in BedrettoLab in a playful way.
