Two gigantic cracks in Earth’s crust have opened near the Turkish-Syrian border after two powerful earthquakes shook the region on Monday, killing over 24,000 people.
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 later, COMET said in a tweet on Friday (Feb. 10).
Researchers from the U.K. Centre for the Observation & Modelling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes & Tectonics (COMET) found the ruptures by comparing satellite images of the area near the Mediterranean Sea coast taken before and after the massive earthquakes..
Tim Wright, who leads the COMET team told Space.com, “The bigger the earthquake, the bigger the fault and the more it slips. The striking length of these two fissures is evidence of the large quantity of energy that the earthquakes released.
The movement of the tectonic plates that caused the earthquakes was such that the cracks are clearly visible on the surface, running through towns and in some cases directly through buildings.
