Deepest earthquake ever recorded surprises scientists
Recommended for Middle Grades
Deepest earthquake
Have you ever felt an earthquake? Most of us have and usually, it is not very strong.
According to scientists, between 1976 and 2020, nearly 57,000 earthquakes shook our planet. Most of them occur on the surface. Very few occur deeper than about 300 km underneath the earth and scientists call them “deep earthquakes”. Until now, they had thought that it was impossible for them to go any deeper.
However, it turns out, they were wrong. Scientists have detected the deepest earthquake ever. This is 751 kilometres below the earth’s surface!
In 2015, a big earthquake shook the Bonin Islands of Japan. But, its aftershocks occurred deeper than the original earthquake, at a record depth of 751 km! This region is very deep inside the earth and it’s extremely hot down there.
Scientists detected it using Japan’s Hi-net array of seismic stations. This is the most powerful system for detecting earthquakes today. On the surface, the deepest earthquake was very light, so they needed extra sensitive instruments to detect it.
Scientists are still trying to understand how the earthquake happened but they said it is a very rare event. They also say that it shows us that perhaps, the layers underneath the earth are not as fixed as we thought.
Moreover, as you can see, scientists continue to learn new things about our planet all the time.
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