Researchers Discover Mechanism That Can Ramp Up Magnitude of Certain EarthquakesIn July 2024, a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck Calama, Chile, damaging buildings and causing power outages. However, the Calama quake was different from the megathrust quakes that are usually associated with the most destructive events in Chile and around the world. But in the case of Calama, a sequence of events, discovered by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, helped supercharge its strength. In a recent study in Nature Communications the researchers describe a newly-discovered chain of events that was responsible for increasing the earthquake’s intensity. The dehydrated rocks are weakened and fractured, which can lead them to rupture – triggering an earthquake in the slab.