– It is impossible to say for sure yet, but it is important to take into account that the distance between the shocks of the beginning of February and the current ones is very large, several hundred kilometers. Most likely, the source of the new earthquake was beyond the size of the area of origin of the first earthquakes, and in this case it is not aftershocks, said the scientist.
In his opinion, such a sequence of strong earthquakes is not an anomaly. This is how nature works. It can be assumed that the 7.7 and 7.5 magnitude shocks activated the East Anatolian fault, some of the remaining tectonic stresses began to redistribute, and seismicity began to “slide” into the Dead Sea, where there are rupture zones. Causing the activation of new stretches of the fault.
“Today, no one could predict that events would develop in such a way that the seismic process that had begun would not meet somewhere with some kind of obstacle and would not stop, or would continue as we are now observing,” says Alexei Zavyalov. As for the claims of various experts that the seismic situation in Turkey will get even worse in the future, we will leave it to your conscience. I can only repeat that, unfortunately, serious science cannot yet predict the scenario for the development of seismic processes. There is only a certain set of scenarios quite likely, but which one will actually come to fruition, only nature decides.”
Help “RG”
How earthquakes happen
At the center of the Earth is the core, surrounded by a hot liquid mantle. The uppermost layer, the crust, is made up of lithospheric plates. At the moment, scientists know about large, dozens of medium plates and a huge number of small plates. They do not stay still, but are constantly moving, bumping into each other.
When one plate pushes against another, enormous tension builds up between them. But it cannot accumulate forever, and after a while one plate gives way to the pressure of another, there is a change and a “discharge” of tension – an earthquake.
Most earthquake sources occur in the earth’s crust at a depth of 30 to 40 km below the Earth’s surface.
Infographic “RG” / Anton Perepletchikov / Yuri Medvedev
