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Earth

Satellites Show Turkey/Syria Earthquake Opened Massive 300km Fissure (space.com) 31

Posted by EditorDavid from the seeing-cracks dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader Jarik C-Bol shares Space.com's report on "two enormous cracks" in the Earth's crust that have opened up near the Turkish-Syrian border after two powerful earthquakes Monday: Researchers from the U.K. Centre for the Observation & Modelling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes & Tectonics (COMET) found the ruptures by comparing images of the area near the Mediterranean Sea coast taken by the European Earth-observing satellite Sentinel-1 before and after the devastating earthquakes. The longer of the two ruptures stretches 190 miles (300 kilometers) in the northeastern direction from the northeastern tip of the Mediterranean Sea. The crack was created by the first of the two major tremors that hit the region on Monday, the more powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck at 4:17 a.m. local time (8:17 p.m. EST on Feb. 5). The second crack, 80 miles long (125 km), opened during the second, somewhat milder 7.5-magnitude temblor about nine hours
"This earthquake fault is one of the longest on record on the continents," the team's leader told Space.com, adding that it was "very unusual to have two such large earthquakes happening within a few hours of each other."
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Satellites Show Turkey/Syria Earthquake Opened Massive 300km Fissure More

Satellites Show Turkey/Syria Earthquake Opened Massive 300km Fissure

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  • Is Turkey doomed?

  • It is quite obvious Erdohan did not listen to those who claim his obedience. And they sent him SBX-1.

  • Burying the Lede (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Saturday February 11, 2023 @04:04PM (#63285495)
    TFA [space.com]

    Two cracks in the Earth's crust opened in the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey on Monday, Feb. 6, satellites believe.

    I think I want to hear more about these satellites rather than the fissures.

  • USGS: Faults do not open up during an earthquake (Score:5, Interesting)

    by butlerm ( 3112 ) on Saturday February 11, 2023 @04:39PM (#63285555)

    The idea that anything "opens up" is quite the exaggeration. This is what the U.S. Geological Survey has to say about that:

    Shallow crevasses can form during earthquake-induced landslides, lateral spreads, or from other types of ground failures, but faults do not open up during an earthquake. An earthquake occurs when two blocks of the earth’s crust slide past one another after having been stuck together in one place for a long time, because of friction on the fault, while the rest of the crust away from the edges has been slowly moving. If a fault could open up, no earthquake would occur in the first place because there would be no friction locking the two blocks together.

    https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/can-... [usgs.gov]

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by RockDoctor ( 15477 )
      It's the usual crap from arts graduate journalists.

      These fault systems have been around for 20-odd million years, maybe 30. They stretch the full thickness of the crust, if not the entire lithosphere. It's pretty likely that the second, smaller quake was an aftershock triggered by the first (20 to 30 times more energetic) quake. Which is in the normal range for aftershocks. That there were several days more aftershocks is, again, pretty normal (I got about 100 notifications of quakes I'd estimate as being

      • It's the usual crap from arts graduate journalists.

        So it's like Tucker Carlson and his degree in history?

        • No idea. I recognise the name, but I can't remember if he's the caricature TV anchorman on Fox TV's comedy channel, or the real-life TV buffoon who regularly appears in the "Family Guy" documentary series. In either case, he's not important enough to be worth looking up. "TV personality turns out to be narcissistic idiot who lies about his past" isn't exactly an attention grabbing piece of "news".
        • Which were so long? In distance, or in time? The faults cover extended distances across the Earth's surface because their forcing stress fields result in primarily horizontal movement, so that if you stand on one side of the fault plane your corresponding nearest point across the fault plane would move to the right or (this case) left, not up or down. So, once the stress field has made the fault slip, stress at the leftmost and right most ends of the slipped length of the fault has increased. Which increas

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skogs ( 628589 )

        The journalist idiocy certainly didn't add to the story any. I'll stick up for them a little bit though - If I were publishing the satellite data in a press release of some sort I would probably take a couple minutes to draw in whatever the fuck we were talking about....because that satellite imagery doesn't exactly distinguish between the existing and 'new exciting' thing we're talking about. The scientists might be pro, but unless you're a pro at looking at the imagery and know what the prior imagery sh

        • What strike me, repeatedly, is that the hiring committees of "news" agencies manage a negative correlation between the science level of the subject and the science level of the person writing about it. It's almost as if the hiring committees expect there to be form in writing regardless of content.

    • The idea that anything "opens up" is quite the exaggeration.

      Huh, what do you know. The Earth openiing up [imgur.com] after [imgur.com] an earthquake [imgur.com]. Not shallow either.

  • "It's more likely than you think"

  • Some pics / video... (Score:3)

    by Known Nutter ( 988758 ) on Saturday February 11, 2023 @06:20PM (#63285761)
    https://imgur.com/gallery/nW8Y... [imgur.com]

  • It all makes sense... (Score:3)

    by mikeebbbd ( 3690969 ) on Saturday February 11, 2023 @11:48PM (#63286257)

    Rupture length for the main shock is similar to that for the 1906 earthquake in California, of nearly the same magnitude. So it checks out. No surprises, really, but having the information so quickly is a big benefit of satellites.

  • Is this how we get breakaway republics? What if the entire country breaks away from its neighbor(s)?

  • Not a single post wondering what's coming out of the giant cracks from Beneath The Earth....

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