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WASHINGTON - China's giant earthquake in May near Chengdu caused so much geologic stress in the Tibetan Plateau that it doubled the chance of more big quakes along three neighboring faults, scientists reported.

"The magnitude 7.9 quake on 12 May has brought several nearby faults closer to failure and could trigger another major earthquake in the region," the American Geophysical Union said in a statement.

This happens because of a domino-like effect where the movement of one piece of Earth's crust forces another piece to move up, down and away, geophysicists reported.

"One great earthquake seems to make the next one more likely, not less," said Ross Stein of the U.S. Geological Survey. "We tend to think of earthquakes as relieving stress on a fault. That may be true for the one that ruptured, but not for the adjacent faults."

The May quake that killed nearly 70,000 people and made 5 million homeless occurred along the Longmen Shan fault. This rupture in the Earth doubled the probability of future earthquakes along the Xianshuihe, Kunlun, and Min Jiang faults, which lie about 90 miles to 280 miles from the Longmen Shan fault, the scientists said.

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