The theory of the Osborne Reynolds dilatancy phenomenon is developed, and it is shown to contain an intrinsic instability of the type needed to account for seismic faulting. This theory requires the presence of fluids in those parts of the earth's crust and upper mantle that show seismic activity, but it provides a mechanism for concentrating the fluids from a distance into those regions that ultimately fail catastrophically. It provides an explanation for the very wide range of ‘time constants’ observed to be associated with earthquakes.
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F. C. Frank (1965) studied this question.
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