For Immediate Release Contact: Nancy O'Shea (312) 665-7100 (For Media Use Only) Exhibition Walk Through Earthquakes and Volcanoes Going Deep Inside the Earth for Answers Over billions of years, our planet has been shaped by dynamic forces that are still operating today. To discover why these events occur, Nature Unleashed looks at what happens deep in the Earth's interior, where heat and pressure generate tremendous forces that cause the plates of the Earth's surface to crack and move. When the edges of these plates grind against, collide into, or pull apart from one another, the shape of the Earth's surface changes. We experience these changes as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake occurred when a segment of the San Andreas Fault, two plates that meet at California's western edge, suddenly snapped. Many buildings collapsed and a great fire virtually destroyed the city; nearly half of San Francisco's 450,000 residents were left homeless. The devastation of San Francisco had a tremendous impact on our understanding of how to prepare for and respond to earthquakes. Twenty-first century technology, including seismographs and satellites, allows scientists to study, detect, and measure earthquakes. Seth Stein, PhD, of Northwestern University, one of the content specialists for the exhibition, believes the huge change in the study of seismology in recent years has been due to increasingly precise satellite technology that allows scientists to measure motions in the ground down to millimeters. Museum visitors can learn about the more than 100,000 earthquakes that occur across the globe each year through an interactive display that allows them to manipulate real-time earthquake data, such as location, time, magnitude, and depth. Continue >>