A first-of-its-kind video showing the ground cracking during a major earthquake is even more remarkable than previously thought. It not only captures a ground motion never caught on video before but also shows the crack curving as it moves.
This curvy movement has been inferred from the geological record and from “slickenlines” — scrape marks on the sides of faults — but it had never been seen in action, geophysicist Jesse Kearse, a postdoctoral researcher currently at Kyoto University in Japan, said in a statement.
“Instead of things moving straight across the video screen, they moved along a curved path that has a convexity downwards, which instantly started bells ringing in my head,” Kearse said, “because some of my previous research has been specifically on curvature of fault slip, but from the geological record.”
2.5 meters (8.5 feet)! Not only that, watch further in the distance past the posts and the potted plant: As the rupture progresses, the entire surface dips slightly and then rises in an almost whip-like fashion.
Crazy to consider: What if you were, within 1.3 seconds, moved 2.5 meters to your left right now?
An even wilder thought experiment: what if your left leg was in one side of the fault and your right leg was on the other?
And what if your feet were nailed to the ground?!