Several years ago Meredith Nettles, a seismologist from Colombia University, and two colleagues made a remarkable discovery: they identified a new kind of earthquake.
几年前，哥伦比亚大学地震学家梅雷迪思·奈特尔斯和两位同事提出了惊人的发现：他们确认了一种新地震。
2
There were remarkable differences between precursor events of this particular earthquake and those of other predicted earthquakes.
这次大地震的前兆与以往地震的和被预测到地震的前兆有很大的不同。
3
That they survived relatively unscathed through a magnitude 9.0 earthquake—ie, one that, given the scale's logarithmic nature, was approximately 15 times more powerful—seems remarkable.