It is a tectonic twin.
Although it is known that earthquakes once destroy things and go away, they have never been documented returning for a second aid of destruction – until now.
In a new seismic study published in Nature Geoscience, an international team of geologists has discovered evidence of a ‘boomerang earthquake’ – a type of earthquake that can ricochet – that shook the sea flower under the Atlantic Ocean in 2016.
“Our new study provides some of the clearest evidence for this enigmatic mechanism occurring in real debt,” said Stephen Hicks, a seismologist for earthquake at Imperial College London.
Seismometers under the sea discovered the tectonic terror that traverses the Romanche Fracture Zone, a 560-mile-long fault that lies about halfway between Brazil and Africa, National Geographic reports. The team then analyzed the position of the epicenter of the earthquake and the energy released by each clutter phase to put the pieces together.
They found that although ordinary temblors directed their energy in one direction, the 7.1-magnitude sample – called a “rear-facing supershear fracture” – after messages shot to the east before doubling back and continuing in the opposite direction. at a faster speed.
“This was a strange kind of configuration to watch,” Hicks said of the earthquake event.
Even more frightening was the tremor during the return journey, which reached a quake-neck speed of 11,000 mph – so fast that it generated the geological equivalent of a sonic tree. Or, to put it simply, fast enough to jet about 18 minutes from London to New York.
Unfortunately, researchers are not entirely sure what caused the earthquake. “Even though the fault structure seems simple, the way the earthquake grew was not, and this was the complete opposite of how we expected the earthquake to look,” Hicks said.
However, it is an exciting find considering that seismic performance so far has initially been observed only in theoretical models. “To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time it has been reported,” geophysicist Yoshihiro Kaneko of GNS Science in New Zealand told National Geographic.
Most importantly, the groundbreaking findings could help researchers understand how “boomerang earthquakes” could potentially affect populated areas, according to Kasey Aderhold, a seismologist with the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology.
This is not the first geological phenomenon that scientists have shocked into their boots. Seismologists have warned that last year’s tremors in Southern California have raised the chance of a major San Andreas Fault earthquake.
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