Seismologist Roger Musson: Haiti Quake Was 'The Big One'

The British Geological Survey in Edinburgh has been one of the leading geoscience research centers in the world since its founding in 1835. To understand more about the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated Haiti on Tuesday, TIME spoke with one of the survey's seismologists, Roger Musson, about the science behind the seismic event.
What sort of earthquake was this?
An earthquake is the sudden release of energy along a fault line in the earth's crust as rocks break in response to stress. There are three types and they depend on the sort of movement along the fault. This was what we call a strike-slip or transform earthquake, where one side of the fault slides horizontally past the other one....

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