Mounting tension in the Himalaya

Discussion in 'Earth Science' started by paddoboy, Jun 15, 2016.

  1. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Mounting_tension_in_the_Himalaya_999.html


    Mounting tension in the Himalaya
    by Staff Writers
    Boulder CO (SPX) Jun 15, 2016

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    Buildings in Kathmandu, Nepal damaged by the April 2015 Gorkha earthquake. Image courtesy of Roger Bilham/CIRES. For a larger version of this image please go here.
    The Gorkha earthquake struck Nepal on April 25, 2015. It's a part of the world that is prone to earthquakes, as the Indian plate makes its incremental, sticky descent beneath the Eurasian plate. The magnitude 7.8 jolt, which was very shallow (only 15 km underground), caused a tremendous amount of damage in Kathmandu. But it didn't rupture the Earth's surface, signifying that only part of the fault had slipped, below-ground.

    In the following days, even the afterslip - post-earthquake movement - produced little surface evidence of continued movement. That meant only one of two things could be happening: either the part of the fault that hadn't moved was experiencing a slow-slip event, a slow-motion earthquake, or it remained completely locked, accumulating further strain in that segment of the fault. A new research paper, out online from Nature Geoscience, finds it is likely the latter.
     

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