A monster earthquake of possibly magnitude 8.2 to 9 is brewing beneath Bangladesh, Myanmar and Northeast India, imperiling 140 million people within 99 km of its potential epicenter, according to a new paper in the journal Nature Geoscience.
An article by Indiaspend ran a lengthy article which summed up to the foretelling of a great peril ahead if it is really happening in the future
Although the article failed to give a proper timeline of when it could take place saying ‘it could be 500 years from now or it could be tomorrow, but the researchers said an earthquake is inevitable’
The evidence comes from the first detailed picture of the region’s tectonic motion. A team of scientists from the U.S, Singapore and Bangladesh analysed the combined data over 13 years from global positioning system (GPS)–a network of satellites around the earth used to locate positions, in this case plates that form the planet’s crust–stations in Bangladesh, with additional data from India and Myanmar.
“This is the first regional GPS study that uses data from across the entire plate-boundary region (locations where two tectonic plates meet),” Michael Steckler, the lead author of the study and a geophysicist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory told IndiaSpend.
“This is a great work,” Vineet Gahalaut, Director, National Centre for Seismology, New Delhi, told IndiaSpend. “Lots of groups and people are working on the Himalayan region, not in this region. Considering the lives involved, the study brings much-needed attention to the seismology of the region.” Gahalaut is not involved with the study.
Read the full article here
Feature image courtesy answersafrica.com
