Question

When many earthquakes are studied, there is another common pattern that emerges: a "Shadow Zone". This is an area, for any earthquake, on the Earth where direct S-waves don't arrive at all and P waves are refracted. What do you think causes these P waves to be refracted? *

Answer 1

Sudden decrease in the velocity at the boundary.

Step-by-step explanation:

The shadow zone is the zone of the earth from angular distances of 104° to 140° from a known earthquake that does not directly receive any P waves. Now, this shadow zone occurs as a result of S waves getting stopped completely by the liquid core and the P waves being refracted by the liquid core.

From earlier seismic discoveries, this boundary which is the shadow zone that does not directly receive any P-waves was found to be due to the fact that the P-waves were refracted inwards as a result of the sudden decrease in velocity at the boundary.