California could be due for a major earthquake in the near future, according to concerning new models based on data comprising 1,000 years of quake activity on the West Coast.

According to recent findings, tectonic stress has quietly been building in California to levels not seen since the last major earthquake in the region, which bore a magnitude of 7.9 and struck the West Coast nearly 170 years ago.

That event, known as the Fort Tejon earthquake, affected the greater Los Angeles area, and since the time of those historic rumblings, researchers have grown increasingly concerned about a period of seismic silence that could point to the likelihood of an event of similar magnitude at some point in the future.

The potentially concerning new forecast was detailed in a recent study by an international team of researchers led by Dr. Liliane Burkhard of the Division of Space Research and Planetary Sciences (WP) at the Physics Institute of the University of Bern, which focused on historic earthquake data as a means of gauging current stress loading at Cajon Pass.

The study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, indicates tectonic stress levels that are now believed to exceed the highest seen during the years the team surveyed.

The “Earthquake Gate” at Cajon Pass

The researchers aimed to investigate stress that has slowly built along the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults and incorporated what they likened to an “earthquake gate” at Cajon Pass, which, in their models, functioned like a point of control that governed the size of earthquakes and whether they could spread to both systems.

For their research, they used a four-dimensional earthquake cycle model that allowed them to replicate certain processes both in spatial dimensions and across time.

Using a millennium of reconstructed earthquake data from the region based on geological information such as radiocarbon dates, unusual events recorded in dendrochronological data (i.e., information obtained from tree rings), and historical information sources, the team gave this to the model they devised.

Dr. Burkhard said the team’s simulation offered them a unique opportunity to better understand the ways stresses in the fault system build up over long periods of several centuries.

“By running the earthquake history of Southern California as a simulation, we can estimate the extent to which the fault system is already under stress today,” Dr. Burkhard said. The results of those simulations weren’t particularly promising either: according to Burkhard, current stress levels in the region are the highest they have been in 1,000 years, based on the data.

Concerning New Earthquake Data

The team also identified significant new information regarding the function of the so-called “earthquake gate” at Cajon Pass.

“The earthquake gate concept captures something important about how fault junctions work,” Burkhard said in a recent statement. “Cajon Pass doesn’t simply block or channel earthquakes: It responds to stress conditions, and those conditions change over centuries.”

Not only this, but Burkhard and her team also determined that a key element to these quakes involves not only the level of stress that accumulates at a single fault, but perhaps more significantly, the way stress between two systems can align. This is because, as the stress across a pair of faults rises together over longer periods, this appears to be most conducive to a large joint rupture comparable to the 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake.

Conversely, if stress levels are not in concert as they evolve, the team determined that this causes quakes that probably will not propagate beyond the junction.

In short, a more severe earthquake event today would entail a joint rupture that crosses the Cajon Pass, as opposed to one constrained either to the San Andreas or the San Jacinto Fault alone. Should such an event occur, it would likely impact one of the largest population centers, as well as a crucial infrastructure system that supplies energy and transportation to surrounding areas.

For Burkhard, “The question of when and how the next major earthquake will occur in this region is one of the most pressing problems in applied geoscience.” Based on the team’s findings, they say that their new modeling hopes to provide a much more complete picture of the science behind the factors that could lead to a major quake—conditions that could apply equally to other parts of the world as they do to California.

Burkhard adds that her team’s study is not intended merely as a prediction for when the next major earthquake could potentially occur, but also as a means of preparing for future quakes and mitigating their effects.

“What we can say is that the system is critically stressed and that physics-based models like ours give a clearer picture of the range of scenarios we should be prepared for,” Burkhard says. “This information is important for hazard assessment, infrastructure planning, and emergency preparedness.”

The team’s study, “Cajon Pass and the Southern San Andreas Fault System: Earthquake Cycle Stress Accumulation and Present‐Day Loading,” appeared in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

A curious recent discovery has revealed a promising new underground archaeological find at the ancient site of Buto in Egypt’s Nile Delta.

Researchers who were testing a remote sensing technology designed to locate buried structures and other below-ground features reported the unique find earlier this year, which could be a previously undiscovered tomb or temple now believed to date as far back as 2,600 years.

The discovery was made at the Tell el-Fara’in site, more commonly known as Buto, which comprises the remains of an ancient city that thrived around 5,600 years ago during Egypt’s Predynastic period.

Origins of a Mystery

Buto underwent several periods of destruction and reassembly throughout its history, making it a significant focus of past archaeological work.

Some of the city’s oldest portions are currently entombed beneath several centuries’ worth of accumulated mud and soil, a factor that significantly complicates traditional excavations. To help them locate an ideal location for future excavation, the team employed an approach that combined SAR (Sentinel-1 GRD) satellite imagery with electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) measurements, which helped them pinpoint an ideal location to dig that would best enable an investigation of Buto’s settlement phases.

“Sentinel-1 (C-band) satellite imagery captured on May 5, 2018, was processed using SNAP software (version 9.0.0) to identify large-scale anomalies indicative of buried structures,” the team reports in a paper detailing their findings, which appeared in Applied Geophysics in March.

“Based on these detected anomalies, the locations for ERT profiles were strategically selected to maximize the likelihood of indicating significant subsurface features,” the team explained.

ERT technology is ideal for such carefully targeted excavation, since it relies on electrical currents placed into the ground, which researchers then use to collect data that helps them assemble a three-dimensional model of the buried structures. This imagery is generated based on differences in the way various materials either display electrical conductivity or resistance.

Buried Discoveries Emerge

Based on the team’s scans, the top three meters of the area revealed a distinctive layer of material, which the team judged to be broken pottery and debris—likely associated with Roman periods of occupation.

However, going further down in their scans, descending to a depth of approximately six meters, the team discovered something more intriguing: what appeared to be some kind of large buried structure.

Based on its depth, the team believes this unique structure is likely associated with the Saite period, which dates it to around 2,600 years ago. Although it remains unknown precisely what the structure is, or what its exact purpose may have been, one possibility is that it could be a large shrine, or even a tomb.

Uncovering Religious Artifacts

Following the initial discovery, the team undertook preliminary excavations of a small 10 x 10-meter area. This revealed walls constructed of mudbrick, as well as religious artifacts in locations that aligned with the team’s scans.

“The presence of a small offering basin along with numerous religious amulets depicting Egyptian deities such as Isis, Horus, Taweret, and Wadjet further supports the temple hypothesis,” the team writes in their study.

Also among the religious artifacts uncovered at the site were a “remarkable bronze amulet with a suspension hole, representing Horus the child” as well as amulets featuring a crouching lion, an amulet of Anubis, and the remains of limestone statues “in sexual positions” along with “a faience plaque with relief carvings of Hathor on both sides.”

However, the team reports that one of the most significant artifacts recovered from this area of the excavation was a steatite scarab bearing the name of King Thutmose III, which the team believes “may have functioned as an amulet or seal.”

“Collectively, these artefacts indicate the presence of a religious site with strong cultic and ceremonial associations, further reinforcing the interpretation of the structure as a temple from the 26th Dynasty,” the team says.

Ongoing Excavations

While still in the early phases, the team’s discoveries so far help to validate the geophysical and remote sensing techniques that made the discovery possible. “The results of this study demonstrate the effectiveness of combining geophysical measurements and remote sensing data,” the team writes, adding that they provided “a very accurate vision in detecting buried settlements in a complex region.”

“3D inversion algorithms were particularly effective in delineating buried mudbrick walls and architectural structures, significantly enhancing our understanding of site formation processes,” the researchers add.

Going forward, the team recommends further ERT surveys, which may help to reveal additional information about the site’s deepest occupation levels. For the time being, the team believes the evidence in hand points to the interpretation of the site and its features as an ancient temple, and that evidence points to the possibility that another may be located nearby.

“Our findings suggest that, in addition to the known temple, another temple may remain buried under a thick clay layer, which will be investigated through extensive measurements in forthcoming studies,” the team writes.

The recent paper, “Multi-scale detection of buried archaeological elements across different occupation phases: an integrated approach using radar satellite imagery and electric resistivity tomography at Buto, northwestern Nile Delta of Egypt,” appeared in Applied Geophysics on March 10, 2026.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.