Earthquake Causes 2.5-Meter Ground Slip in First-Ever Footage | Hacker News Reader

Earthquake Causes 2.5-Meter Ground Slip in First-Ever Footage

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94 pointsdylan60418 comments

I'm getting older and pretty jaded, but this is genuinely amazing to see. Not only did an earthquake get captured, entire chunks of the earth moved both horizontally and vertically, measureable off of that video. I still get dumbfounded at the amount of energy involved in things like this, and how much potential is stored up in other faults getting ready to pop--and this was "just" a 7.7! Super interesting to see! We humans are but ants to this planet's heel, ready to be stomped upon.

Video link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbEYe65eDdw

No, this is original the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77ubC4bcgRM 2 months ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43974910

And here’s the paper: https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/ssa/tsr/article/5/3/281/659...

Although the pole mentioned in the video is interesting, for me the more prominent visual signal of the motion is another pole right near the center of the view. It starts out visible within the frame of the arch, near its right side. When the quake hits, this pole moves so far to the right that it's almost totally obscured behind the wall of the arch, and it can be seen swaying back and forth.

Also, there is a pylon on the far right of the scene that seems to partially collapse.

It's cool that we have this video, but sobering to remember that thousands of people died in this quake.

Anybody know how property lines get reconciled after a fault slip like this?

Think I just watched that Star Trek episode..

Depends on the country, obviously. This videos was taken in Myanmar, so ask a real estate lawyer in Myanmar. Around here most boundaries are based on landmarks and other boundaries. If the land shifts horizontally then so do all or most of the borders.

Somewhat ironic that you start by acknowledging that it will be different depending what country you're in, and then write an anecdote on a website used by an international audience saying "around here" with no mention of what "here" means to you! (Well, ironic is the wrong word unless you're Alanis Morrisette, but you know what I mean)

Since the rules vary, my location doesn’t really matter; you’re going to have to find out for sure what the rules are in your jurisdiction anyway.

In New Zealand we use a special local coordinate system NZGD2000 that accounts for both tectonic drift and one-off Earthquake slip events.

The numerical coordinate values stay the same but their mapping to real world positions change over time. Hence the coordinate converter requires date as a parameter: https://www.geodesy.linz.govt.nz/concord/

https://www.linz.govt.nz/guidance/survey/earthquakes/kaikour...

Shawn Willsey, Geology Explained, has an 11min summary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfKFK4-HNmk

I'm amazed to learn that we hadn't had video like this before, but it had to come about sometime!

The most active faults are not conducive to placing of video cameras. They could have been watching the San Andreas for years, but nothing much happens like this.

Also, was this a known fault? Seems like a bad location to build anything if it was known.

Essentially all of myanmar is an active fault zone because it's sandwiched between 4 plates. The narrow cracks we see on the surface are just where the soil happened to separate this one time, not the only place movement can happen.

Truly groundbreaking stuff.

This footage is incredible and invaluable for science. It really puts into perspective how much energy is released during an earthquake.

incredible footage.

just mind bolggling to consider the energy involved here.

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