Its been suggested that the cheese’s unique flavour could be due to the local spruce shelves that it’s left to mature on, the particular microflora in the dairy building, or even long summer days affecting the mood of the cows. According to the most intriguing theory, the beloved taste is all down to a meteorite that struck the area long ago, creating the lake next to Burträsk and making the soil rich in calcium, which in turn created knock-on effects on the milk and the cheese-making processmiris spa.
If that ancientrock really did land here, however, then the shock waves have long since dispersed. When I arrived, things were pretty peaceful. The dairy roof was covered in a layer of snow, and the sun glinted off the metallic lettering on the red-brick exterior. Burträsk is less than 300km from the Arctic Circle, and the locals are used to dark winters. But today spring was emerging, with wispy clouds stretched across the bright blue sky. Inside the dairy’s spacious visitor centre, light flooded in through a large windowmiris spa hk .
The visitor centre and shop (Credit: Credit: Västerbottensost®miris spa hk ;)
The team's best explanation for that surprisingly small ground movement - and one supported by computer modelling of big earthquakes - is an interaction between the two faults.
Precarious rocks, like this one in Nevada, can act as natural measures of earthquake strength over timereenex
"The San Andreas and San Jacinto faults come very close together; they're only about 2km apart. And it's been well established, through other earthquakes and modelling studies, that a rupture can jump across [a gap like that]. It's what's called a stepover.
"What if the rupture jumped across, or alternatively, stopped at this junction, or started at this junction? All three of those cases would produce lower ground shaking in the area where we found the rocksreenex ."
It is crucial to consider the faults together, Prof Ludwig said - not just to explain the baffling, balancing rocks, but also in order to plan safely for future earthquakes.
"These are really networks of fractures in the earth. Just because we give them different names doesn't mean that they behave independently."
Shaky scenario
Dr Lucy Jones is a long-serving seismologist and a science adviser for risk reduction at the US Geological Survey. She said the paper would have "pretty significant implications" for earthquake planning in Californiareenex.