EARTHQUAKE RESEARCH PAPER

Earthquake is one of the most horrific and devastating natural phenomena, which can cause
great damage to the areas it take place in, prolonged economic chaos, and even kills scores of
innocent people. The worst thing is that this incredible destructive force can occur quite
unpredictably, as its a sudden slip in the earths crust, causing the earth to shake and bringing
huge harm to society.
I see that firstly it can be a little difficult for you to define the specific topic, as this field covers
many exciting aspects and each is worthy of your attention. Lets look through some of them, as
Im sure it will help you make the right choice.
New technologies. As earthquake questing is very important nowadays, new technologies are
being developed all over the world. They can provide better protection and give more accurate
prediction of the seismic disasters. For example, using vibration control and base isolation
technologies in construction.
Safety rules. Such information is very useful for everyone, as nobody knows where the next
earthquake will occur and how to behave in this situation.
Bermuda Triangle. One of the versions explaining the Bermuda mystery is an underwater
earthquake, as scientists have found a seismic activity in this area, which can cause tsunamis up
to 100 feet high.
Real experience. Write your research work on a true story of a person, who has once experienced
an earthquake, describing the most interesting moments.
Origin. What are the main reasons for seismic waves and how do scientists explain them? Do
people have a direct impact on them by industry and mass building?
Define in which
Comets: Basic Facts
Comets are big chunks of ice, rock and gas. They are dirty snowballs of leftovers from the
beginning of our solar system. Comets get their name from the Greek word "kometes" (long hair)
- a reference to their tails.
Comets are mysterious. Scientists think they might be able to tell us about the origins of our
solar system.
Comets orbit the Sun like planets. Most comets orbit way out beyond the orbit of Pluto. It can
take a comet hundreds or even millions of years to go once around the Sun. On Earth, it only
takes 365 days. Most come from a super distant ring of debris around our solar system called the
Oort Cloud.A few comets close enough for us to see from Earth. They probably come from an
area around Pluto called the Kuiper Belt. When Earth passes through the tail of a comet, we see a
meteor shower.
WHAT'S IT LIKE ON A COMET?
Unless you could travel way out beyond Pluto, it would be hard to stand or land on a comet.
When comets get close to the Sun, they begin spewing gas and dust. The debris form the head -

or coma - and a tail. The tail always points away from the Sun. The only solid part is the nucleus
in the middle.
If you did manage to land on a comet, you might end up getting blasted into space on a jet of
gas and rock. Or, if your comet got too close to the Sun, it would break up completely. Gravity is
so light you would feel like a feather.
Spacecraft that visit comets have to be tough. The rocks and debris in the tail can cause a lot of
damage. In the next few years, scientists will use super tough spacecraft to catch pieces of a
comet's tail and blast a football-field size hole in another comet to see what's inside the nucleus.
COMET FACTS
A comet is a very small solar system body made mostly of ices mixed with smaller amounts of
dust and rock. Most comets are no larger than a few kilometres across. The main body of the
comet is called the nucleus, and it can contain water, methane, nitrogen and other ices.
When a comet is heated by the Sun, its ices begin to sublimate (similar to the way dry ice
fizzes when you leave it in sunlight). The mixture of ice crystals and dust blows away from the
comet nucleus in the solar wind, creating a pair of tails. The dust tail is what we normally see
when we view comets from Earth.
A plasma tail also forms when molecules of gas are excited by interaction with the solar wind.
The plasma tail is not normally seen with the naked eye, but can be imaged. Comets normally
orbit the Sun, and have their origins in the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt regions of the outer solar
system.
Facts About Comets
There are many misconceptions about comets, which are simply pieces of solar system ices
travelling in orbit around the Sun. Here are some fascinating and true facts about comets.
The nucleus of a comet is made of ice and can be as small as a few meters across to giant
boulders a few kilometres across.
The closest point in a comets orbit to the Sun is called perihelion. The most distant point is
called aphelion.
As a comet gets closer to the Sun, it begins to experience heat. That causes some of its ices to
sublimate (similar to dry ice sizzling in sunlight). If the ice is close to the comets surface, it may
form a small jet of material spewing out from the comet like a mini-geyser.
Material streams from comets and populates the comets orbit. If Earth (or another planet)
happens to move through that stream, those particles fall to Earth as meteor showers.
As a comet gets close to the Sun, it loses some of its mass due to the sublimation. If a comet
goes around enough times, it will eventually break up. Comets also break up if they come TOO
close to the Sun or another planet in their orbits.
Comets are usually made of frozen water and supercold methane, ammonia and carbon dioxide
ices. Those are mixed with rock, dust, and other metallic bits of solar system debris.

Comets have two tails: a dust tail (which you can see with the naked eye) and a plasma tail,
which is easily photographed but difficult to see with your eyes.
Comet orbits are usually elliptical.
Many comets formed in the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belts, two of the outermost regions of the
solar system.
Comets are not spaceships or alien bases. They are fascinating bits of solar system material that
date back to the formation of the Sun and planets.

Comet Naming
Comets come in several categories. The most common are periodic and non-periodic.
In the past, comets were named for their discoverers, such as Comet Halley for Sir Edmond
Halley. In modern times, comet names are governed by rules set forth by the International
Astronomical Union (IAU). A comet is given an official designation, and can also be identified by
the last names of up to three independent discoverers.
Asteroids: Fun Facts and Information About Asteroids
Asteroids are small, airless rocky worlds revolving around the sun that are too small to be called
planets. They are also known as planetoids or minor planets. In total, the mass of all the
asteroids is less than that of Earth's moon. But despite their size, asteroids can be dangerous.
Many have hit Earth in the past, and more will crash into our planet in the future. That's one
reason scientists study asteroids and are eager to learn more about their numbers, orbits and
physical characteristics. If an asteroid is headed our way, we want to know that.
Most asteroids lie in a vast ring between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. This main asteroid belt
holds more than 200 asteroids larger than 60 miles (100 kilometers) in diameter. Scientists
estimate the asteroid belt also contains more than 750,000 asteroids larger than three-fifths of a
mile (1 km) in diameter and millions of smaller ones. Not everything in the main belt is an
asteroid for instance, comets have recently been discovered there, and Ceres, once thought of
only as an asteroid, is now also considered a dwarf planet.
Many asteroids lie outside the main belt. For instance, a number of asteroids called Trojans lie
along Jupiter's orbital path. Three groups Atens, Amors, and Apollos known as near-Earth
asteroids orbit in the inner solar system and sometimes cross the path of Mars and Earth.
Asteroids are leftovers from the formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. Early
on, the birth of Jupiter prevented any planetary bodies from forming in the gap between Mars
and Jupiter, causing the small objects that were there to collide with each other and fragment
into the asteroids seen today.
Physical characteristics
Asteroids can reach as large as Ceres, which is 940 km (about 583 miles) across. On the other
hand, one of the smallest, discovered in 1991 and named 1991 BA, is only about 20 feet (6
meters) across.

Nearly all asteroids are irregularly shaped, although a few are nearly spherical, such as Ceres.
They are often pitted or cratered for instance, Vesta has a giant crater some 285 miles (460
km) in diameter. The surfaces of most asteroids are thought to be covered in dust.
As asteroids revolve around the sun in elliptical orbits, they rotate, sometimes tumbling quite
erratically. More than 150 asteroids are also known to have a small companion moon, with some
having two moons. Binary or double asteroids also exist, in which two asteroids of roughly equal
size orbit each other, and triple asteroid systems are known as well. Many asteroids seemingly
have been captured by a planet's gravity and become moons likely candidates include among
Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos and most of the distant outer moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus
and Neptune.
The average temperature of the surface of a typical asteroid is minus 100 degrees F (minus 73
degrees C). Asteroids have stayed mostly unchanged for billions of years as such, research
into them could reveal a great deal about the early solar system.
Asteroids come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some are solid bodies, while others are smaller
piles of rubble bound together by gravity. One, which orbits the sun between Neptune and
Uranus, comes with its own set of rings. Another has not one but six tails.
Classification
In addition to classifications of asteroids based on their orbits, most asteroids fall into three
classes based on composition. The C-type or carbonaceous are greyish in color and are the most
common, including more than 75 percent of known asteroids. They probably consist of clay and
stony silicate rocks, and inhabit the main belt's outer regions. The S-type or silicaceous asteroids
are greenish to reddish in color, account for about 17 percent of known asteroids, and dominate
the inner asteroid belt. They appear to be made of silicate materials and nickel-iron. The M-type
or metallic asteroids are reddish in color, make up most of the rest of the asteroids, and dwell in
the middle region of the main belt. They seem to be made up of nickle-iron. There are many
other rare types based on composition as well for instance, V-type asteroids typified by Vesta
have a basaltic, volcanic crust.
Earth impacts
Ever since Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago, asteroids and comets have routinely
slammed into the planet. The most dangerous asteroids are extremely rare, according to NASA.
An asteroid capable of global disaster would have to be more than a quarter-mile wide.
Researchers have estimated that such an impact would raise enough dust into the atmosphere to
effectively create a "nuclear winter," severely disrupting agriculture around the world. Asteroids
that large strike Earth only once every 1,000 centuries on average, NASA officials say.
Smaller asteroids that are believed to strike Earth every 1,000 to 10,000 years could destroy a
city or cause devastating tsunamis.
On Feb. 15, 2013, an asteroid slammed into the atmosphere over the Russian city of
Chelyabinsk, creating a shock wave that injured 1,200 people. The space rock is thought to have
measured about 65 feet (20 meters) wide when it entered Earth's atmosphere.
Dozens of asteroids have been classified as "potentially hazardous" by the scientists who track
them. Some of these, whose orbits come close enough to Earth, could potentially be perturbed in

the distant future and sent on a collision course with our planet. Scientists point out that if an
asteroid is found to be on a collision course with Earth 30 or 40 years down the road, there is
time to react. Though the technology would have to be developed, possibilities include exploding
the object or diverting it. [Image Gallery: Potentially Dangerous Asteroids]
For every known asteroid, however, there are many that have not been spotted, and shorter
reaction times could prove more threatening.

Meteoroids are the smallest members of the solar system, ranging in size from large
fragments of asteroids or comets, to extremely small micrometeoroids. Whenever a meteoroid
plows into the Earths atmosphere, it will create a brief flash of moving light in the sky, called a
meteor. Meteors were once thought to be a purely atmospheric phenomena, and the study of
these and other atmospheric effects, especially weather, spawned the science of meteorology. It
was not until the mid-1800s that the extra-terrestrial nature of meteors was widely recognized. If
remnants of the parent meteoroid survive the trip through the atmosphere to reach the ground,
then these remnants are called meteorites.
Most meteor showers have their origins with comets. Each time a comet swings by the sun, it
produces copious amounts of meteoroid sized particles which will eventually spread out along
the entire orbit of the comet to form a meteoroid stream. If the Earths orbit and the comets
orbit intersect at some point, then the Earth will pass through this stream for a few days at
roughly the same time each year, encountering a meteor shower. The only major shower clearly
shown to be non-cometary is the Geminid shower, which share an orbit with the asteroid (3200
Phaethon): one that comes unusually close to the sun as well as passing through the earths
orbit. Most shower meteoroids appear to be fluffy, but the Geminids are much more durable as
might be expected from asteroid fragments.