We all know, either from having read some news, from having seen it on the news or from having experienced it, that earthquakes are capable of destroying roads, buildings and all kinds of constructions. But, in addition, they can modify the landscape ... or even the planet itself.
And is that a recent study shows that earthquakes change the elastic properties of the earth's crust. Amazing, isn't it?
Earth crust
But first, let's see what the earth's crust is.
The Earth's crust is the outer rock layer of the planet. Really it is very fine, about 5km thick on the ocean floor, and up to 70km in mountainous areas. The crust as we know it today is around 1700-1900 million years old. The oceanic, which covers 78% of the Earth's surface, and the continental one differ.
How an earthquake forms
As we know, the planet, geologically speaking, seems like a puzzle due to the different tectonic plates (also called lithospheric plates) that exist. When too much tension builds up between them, is released, thus causing the tremor.
How can an earthquake modify the elastic properties of the crust?
Earthquakes can trigger others several miles away, but now a team led by Andrew Delorey, from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Kevin Chao, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, United States, have also discovered that when tension causes two faults to move, energy is released in the form of seismic waves.
These waves, when passing to another fault region, modify the elasticity that allows the crust to withstand the stress. So, the state of structural stress also changes, which can end up causing a new earthquake.
Earth is a much more dynamic planet than you might think at first.