December 2012

The simultaneous earthquakes seen in past few years in the Indian Ocean may be a cause of breaking up of the Tectonic Plate for the formation of a new plate boundary within the earth surface. Keith Koper, from University of Utah Seismograph Station, states that the earthquakes with magnitude-8 in two hour in April 2012 created at least four faults within the earth’s Indo Australian plate. The geological stress that split the Indo-Australian plates were caused due to the massive quakes with magnitude-8.6 and 8.2 within 2 hours on 11 April 2012 and its after effects were felt in form of small and big shocks for continuous six days. These earth quakes are being considered as the latest step towards the formation of the new boundary plates. It’s suspected by the seismologists that the process of disintegration of the Indo-Australian plates has been in process since 1980’s. As per Matthias Delescluse, a geophysicist at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris the earthquakes witnessed on 11 April 2012 was one of its kinds and was the most spectacular example of the change process.
He considers it to be one of the clearest examples of the formation of plate boundaries. The available theories that speak about plate-tectonics hints that the internal deformation of the Indo-Australian plate started at least 10 million years ago.

The theories elaborate that the northward movement of the plates nearby India that was crunched against the Eurasian Plate thrusted Himalayas above by slowing down India. The science fraternity suspects that the Australian portion, which was forged before by the twisting tensions is responsible for the split being caused in the plates in the Indian Ocean.

As per the findings of Delescluse and his team, they inferred the presence of seismic stress zones using modeling changes of stress shortly before the earthquakes happened in the year 2012. Their findings signal that the 2012 earthquakes were triggered during the earthquakes of the year 2004 with magnitude-9.1 that caused the tsunami in Indian Ocean and the one felt in the year 2005.

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