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 espite the dread they inspire, earthquakes are little understood by most people. It all boils down to sliding plates.
In California, along 600 miles of a deep vertical fracture called the San Andreas fault, two huge chunks of the earth’s crust, the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, are sliding past each other at the rate of a couple of inches per year.
In Turkey, a remarkably similar scenario is taking place as the Asian Plate slides past the Anatolian Plate at roughly the same stately speed.
And in Taiwan, the Philippine Sea Plate is ramming into the Asian Plate at a welter of faults crisscrossing that island. The Philippine Sea Plate is actually pushing up and over the other plate, creating picturesque mountains where tourists can relax in lush resorts amid tea plantations.
Gradual doesn’t equal tranquil, however. While the plates slowly move, they do not slide steadily past or over each other. They remain stuck together at the fault. “The rocks bend like a stick, building up strain as the blocks keep moving,” says earth scientist James Dolan. “They’re bending, bending, bending – and eventually, they bend so much that they exceed the strength of the fault. Then the fault breaks, and we have an earthquake.”
A ONCE-TRANQUIL patch of Turkish shoreline is ruptured by faults and has slumped into the bay. |
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