Nepal Earthquake Happened Right On Schedule, Scientists Say

A devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Nepal on Saturday was part of a pattern of major temblors that have become so predictable that many seismologists had been expecting this one -- and at least one team of researchers warned just weeks ago that a major quake was due in the exact location where this one struck. Nepal sits right where the Indo-Australian Plate is pushing itself beneath the Eurasian Plate, a collision that gave rise to the Himalayan Mountains. As the plates push, pressure builds, eventually resulting in a quake to relieve that pressure. And according to Nature, the Indo-Australian Plate is still pushing itself under the Eurasian Plate at a rate of nearly 2 inches per year. “Geologically speaking, that’s very fast," Lung S. Chan, a geophysicist at the University of Hong Kong, told the Wall Street Journal. “Earthquakes dissipate energy, like lifting the lid off a pot of boiling water... But it builds back up after you put the lid back on.” That immense and constant pressure has led to an unusually regular pattern of major quakes, making it "one of the most seismically hazardous regions on Earth," according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Major earthquakes in the region are so regular that they occur roughly every 75-80 years. With the last one hitting just east of Kathmandu 81 years ago in 1934, most seismologists believed the area was due for another. “We knew it was going to happen. We saw it in ’34,” USGS geologist Susan Hough told th...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news