The Tortoise and the Hare: Slow vs Fast Earthquake

In the past decade, earthquake scientists have discovered a family of unusually slow earthquakes. These slow earthquakes occur in diverse geologic environments. Like ordinary earthquakes, they occur as slip on the same faults that host ordinary earthquakes, but they take a long time to unfold, such that they can be described as 'slow.' Their discovery was enabled by deployment of highly sensitive earthquake monitoring networks.