သုံးရလွယ်ကူစေသည့် Link များ

နောက်ဆုံးရသတင်း

Sunday's Massive Earthquake in Asia a Geological Rarity - 2004-12-27


Geologists describe Sunday's powerful earthquake in the Indian Ocean as a once-in-a-generation event.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the eight-point-nine magnitude earthquake that triggered the devastating tsunami, or tidal wave, occurred at a depth of 10 kilometers, and was centered west of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, some 16,000 kilometers northwest of Jakarta. Julie Martinez is a USGS geophysicist in (the western U.S. state of) Colorado.

Ms. Martinez said, "This is actually the fifth-largest [seismic] event since 1900. It is the largest since the Prince William Sound earthquake in Alaska of 1964. It is pretty rare."

Geologists say the earth's crust is not a seamless skin. Rather, it is fractured into seven major plates, and more than a dozen lesser ones. These plates are not stationary; they move and collide with one another, creating what are known as faultlines. Along some faultlines, one plate's edge will sink beneath another. In other cases, the plates rub and slip sideways along the faultline.

Julie Martinez says Sunday's earthquake occurred along the so-called Andaman Thrust, a faultline that runs between several plates in the eastern Indian Ocean.

Ms. Martinez said,"This earthquake is on a quite [active] seismic zone. It is on the Andaman Thrust. The plates are colliding. It is the collision of the Australia and Indonesia plates with the Burma plate. With this size of an earthquake, it caused a rupture of about a thousand kilometers along the Andaman thrust."

Ms. Martinez says the tidal wave spawned by the quake reached as far away as Somalia's coastline, but in a much-weakened form. A series of aftershocks have been recorded, including one registering seven-point-three on the Richter scale that jolted parts of Bangladesh. Minor aftershocks have been detected as far away as the U.S. states of Alaska and California.

XS
SM
MD
LG