Two gigantic fissures in the Earth’s crust appeared near the Turkish-Syrian border after two strong earthquakes struck the area on Monday, February 6, killing over 25,000 people.
Researchers from the U.K. Centre for the Observation & Modelling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes & Tectonics (COMET) found the ruptures by comparing images of the area near the Mediterranean Sea coast taken by the European Earth-observing satellite Sentinel-1 before and after the devastating earthquakes.
The longer of the two ruptures stretches 190 miles (300 kilometers) in the northeastern direction from the northeastern tip of the Mediterranean Sea. The crack was created by the first of the two major tremors that hit the region on Monday, the more powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck at 4:17 a.m. local time (8:17 p.m. EST on Feb. 5). The second crack, 80 miles long (125 km), opened during the second, somewhat milder 7.5-magnitude temblor about nine hours later, COMET said in a tweet on Friday (Feb. 10).
Such ruptures appear commonly after powerful earthquakes, Professor Tim Wright, who leads the COMET team, told Space.com in an email. These two fissures, however, are unusually long, a testament to the enormous amount of energy the earthquakes unleashed.
