Within engineering, most tribology is carried out on systems of a few millimetres up to a few metres in size. It's interesting to look at some research that has been made on systems of 3-5 orders of magnitude larger than that. These are geological faults within the Earth's surface.
In 1985, the evil semiconductor magnate Max Zorin attempted to trigger a massive earthquake via the deliberate hydrostatic lubrication of geological faults. His effort was portrayed in the espionage yarn "A View to a Kill". A turning point of that film's plot was James Bond's realisation that oil wells were being used to pump sea water into the ground rather than oil out of it. Fortunately, Bond was able to thwart Zorin's plan. This film deserves an award for introducing tribology to millions of cinema-goers world-wide.
A recent serious article has publicised some interesting research into the tribology of earthquakes. Several months after a severe earthquake, the researchers measured sub-surface temperatures at numerous points along the fault line. They determined the temperature rise of the rock, estimated the amount of energy dissipated through friction and deduced the coefficient of friction at the interface. Presumably (but omitted from the short article) the initial temperature was estimated by backwards extrapolation of a cooling curve that began when the temperature sensors were installed.
The final result, mu = 0.08, is both impressively precise and surprisingly low. The low magnitude is apparently explained by hydrodynamic lubrication caused by localised melting of the rock at the fault line. Rather than hydrostatic lubrication, the real earthquake would have been triggered when the shear stress at the interface exceeded the much higher static frictional level of the solid rock/rock interface.
The conclusion of one of the researchers could apply equally to seismology and tribology: "This was a major accomplishment, but there is still a lot we don't yet know."