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Many scientists disagree. They say those quakes, and thousands of others before and since, are mainly the work of humans, caused by wells used to bury vast amounts of wastewater from oil and gas exploration deep in the earth near fault zones. And they warn that continuing to entomb such huge quantities risks more dangerous tremors — if not here, then elsewhere in the state’s sprawling well fields.

SAN JOSE, California (AP) -- Small earthquakes shaking Oklahoma and southern Kansas daily and linked to energy drilling are dramatically increasing the chance of bigger and dangerous quakes, federal research indicates. This once stable region is now just as likely to see serious damaging and potentially harmful earthquakes as the highest risk places east of the Rockies such as New Madrid, Missouri, and Charleston, South Carolina, which had major quakes in the past two centuries. Still it's a low risk, about a 1 in 2,500 years' chance of happening, according to geophysicist William Ellsworth of the U.S. Geological Survey.

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM/AP) – Nine earthquakes, three of them greater than a 3.0 in magnitude, rocked the DFW area on Tuesday afternoon and into early Wednesday, knocking items off of walls, causing cracks to appear in ceilings and generally rattling nerves across the region. “Shook my whole house!” said CBS 11 News viewer Aprille Maganda from her home in the Las Colinas area of Irving.

There have been more than 500 magnitude 3.0 or greater earthquakes in Oklahoma this year, up significantly from 109 in 2013 and just 35 in 2012, according to U.S. Geological Survey officials. As of Monday, there were 549 of the higher magnitude quakes in 2014, with 19 being magnitude 4.0 or greater. USGS officials focused on magnitude 3.0 or greater quakes because the smaller the magnitude, the more potential there is for missing an event, USGS Geophysicist Robert Williams said. The USGS is looking into the increase in earthquakes, mostly occurring in central and north-central Oklahoma, he said. “Starting probably...

Niannian Fan, a river sciences researcher at Tsinghua University in Chengdu, China, presented new thoughts on the disappearance of the Sanxingdui culture from a walled city on the banks of China's Minjiang River some 3,000 years ago, at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. "The current explanations for why it disappeared are war and flood, but both are not very convincing," Fan told Live Science. In the 1980s, scientists found two pits of broken Bronze Age jades, elephant tusks, and bronze sculptures. Similar artifacts have been found nearby at another ancient city known as Jinsha. Did the people...

If the supervolcano underneath Yellowstone National Park ever had another massive eruption, it could spew ash for thousands of miles across the United States, damaging buildings, smothering crops, and shutting down power plants. It'd be a huge disaster...

A powerful earthquake in Alaska sent towering waves up to 30 feet (9 meters) tall crashing down on Hawaii about 500 years ago, leaving behind fragments of coral, mollusk shells and coarse beach sand in a sinkhole located on the island of Kauai, new research finds. The quake, likely a magnitude 9.0, sent the mighty waves toward Hawaii sometime between 1425 and 1665, the study found. It's possible that another large Alaskan earthquake could trigger a comparable tsunami on Hawaii's shores in the future, experts said. The tsunami was at least three times the size of the damaging 1946 tsunami,...

With several faults slicing through the San Francisco Bay Area, forecasting the next deadly earthquake becomes a question of when and where, not if. Now researchers propose that four faults have built up enough seismic strain (stored energy) to unleash destructive earthquakes, according to a study published today (Oct. 13) in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. The quartet includes the Hayward Fault, the Rodgers Creek Fault, the Green Valley Fault and the Calaveras Fault. While all are smaller pieces of California's San Andreas Fault system, which is more than 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) long, the four faults...

Researchers at Caltech and the University of Miami in Florida found that the volcano pictures, such as those that are forming the Hawaiian Islands, illustrate that it erupts when magma gushes out as narrow jets from deep inside Earth but those pictures are wrong. Don Anderson, the Eleanor and John R. McMillian Professor of Geophysics, Emeritus, at Caltech said that new seismology data are now confirming that such narrow jets don't actually exist. He further explained that, in fact, basic physics doesn't support the presence of these jets, called mantle plumes, and the new results corroborated those fundamental ideas. It...

A message Japan began delivering Monday is a bit unusual, but true enough: Don’t wait until it’s too late to think about toilet paper. The government and paper companies kicked off a “Let’s stockpile toilet paper!” campaign to mark Disaster Prevention Day, warning of a possible crisis because nearly half of the supply comes from one of Japan’s most earthquake-prone areas. Officials said people immediately think of food and water as emergency supplies, but easily forget toilet paper, and get desperate when it’s too late. …

BRITAIN could freeze in YEARS of super-cold winters and miserable summers if the Baroabunga volcano erupts, experts have warned. Depending on the force of the explosion, minute particles thrust beyond the earth’s atmosphere can trigger DECADES of chaotic weather patterns. Tiny pieces of debris act as billions of shields reflecting the sun’s light away from earth meaning winter temperatures could plunge LOWER THAN EVER before while summer will be devoid of sunshine. The first effect could be a bitterly cold winter to arrive in weeks with thermometers plunging into minus figures and not rising long before next summer. The Icelandic...

Oklahoma residents whose homes and nerves have been shaken by an upsurge in earthquakes want to know what’s causing the temblors—and what can be done to stop them.Hundreds of people are expected to turn out in Edmond, Oklahoma, on Thursday night for a town hall meeting on the issue. […] Oklahoma recorded nearly 150 between January and the start of May. Though most have been too weak to cause serious damage or endanger lives, they’ve raised suspicions that the shaking might be connected to the oil and gas drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing, especially the wells in which the...

A moderate earthquake shook northwest Alaska on Monday, the fifth temblor of the same magnitude since April in an area with otherwise little activity, seismologists said. The magnitude-5.7 quake struck at 4:01 a.m. Monday northeast of the village of Noatak, the Alaska Earthquake Center reported. As with other temblors in the earthquake swarm, the quake was felt in Noatak, an Inupiat Eskimo community of 560 people. […] The series of earthquakes has scientists puzzled about activity that is considered very unusual in the area. “At this point, we don’t really understand the nature of these earthquakes,” (earthquake center seismologist Natasha)...

Rong-Gong Lin II June 2, 2014, 7:42 PM No, it's not your imagination: The Los Angeles area is feeling more earthquakes this year.. After a relatively quiet period of seismic activity in the Los Angeles area, the last five months have been marked by five earthquakes larger than 4.0. That hasn't occurred since 1994, the year of the destructive Northridge earthquake that produced 53 such temblors. Over the next two decades, there were some years that passed without a single quake 4.0 or greater. Earthquake experts said 2014 is clearly a year of increased seismic activity, but they said it's...

Nabhan is a former teacher in California and now lives in Pittsburgh. He became interested in earthquakes while he was the earthquake preparedness coordinator for the school he worked at. He says he noticed every earthquake happened at dusk or dawn. “I realized this sort of conscience doesn’t happen in science. These dawn and dusk quakes during new and full moons are the paradigm on the west coast,” he said. “All six great quakes that have struck in Los Angeles that have killed people since the 30s, all of them, dawn or dusk [quakes]. How can earthquakes be predicted? Nabhan...

Imagine getting an alert on your smartphone seconds before an earthquake strikes. If ongoing research and experiments by various governmental and non-governmental agencies succeed, we could soon receive such a notification, seconds or even minutes before the tremors, thereby saving precious lives. Starting with an initiative by the Community Seismic Network of the California Institute of Technology to the Qatar Computing Research Institute, which has announced various projects related to emergency response in times of an earthquake or other similar natural disasters, efforts are on to leverage the potential of the smartphone and other smart devices to one day being...

The rate of earthquakes in Oklahoma has increased remarkably since October 2013 – by about 50 percent – significantly increasing the chance for a damaging magnitude 5.5 or greater quake in central Oklahoma. View map of Oklahoma seismicity. View animation of Oklahoma Seismicity. A new U.S. Geological Survey and Oklahoma Geological Survey analysis found that 145 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater occurred in Oklahoma from January 2014 (through May 2; see accompanying graphic). The previous annual record, set in 2013, was 109 earthquakes, while the long-term average earthquake rate, from 1978 to 2008, was just two magnitude 3.0...

Mile for mile, there are almost as many earthquakes rattling Oklahoma as California this year. This major increase in seismic shaking led to a rare earthquake warning today (May 5) from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Oklahoma Geological Survey. In a joint statement, the agencies said the risk of a damaging earthquake — one larger than magnitude 5.0 — has significantly increased in central Oklahoma.

The URL shows the swarm of small earthquakes in Oklahoma. I have not heard any explanation for these. The URL lists all 2.5+ earthquakes in the past 30 days. There is one just across the border in Kansas... According to USGS, there are 123 Earthquakes in the past 30 days in the Oklahoma area. These are all very small earthquakes or better termed tremors.

Crowds gathered early Friday in San Francisco - as they have done every year for 108 years - to remember the great quake of 1906. Children and grownups gathered at 5 a.m. around Lotta's Fountain to lay a wreath and sound sirens remembering the moment the quake struck. The gold-painted fountain on Market Street served as a meeting point during the earthquake and its aftermath. The early 20th century earthquake struck at 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906 in San Francisco, leading to a devastating fires that lasted for several days. In the end, about 3,000 people died and more...