4 ms·
Interesting, but then why there aren’t earthquakes in Africa? If a continent is separating from another there should be some seismic activity I guess.
by giuliomagnifico 4y ago
Interesting, but then why there aren’t earthquakes in Africa? If a continent is separating from another there should be some seismic activity I guess.
- isoprophlex 4y agoApparently there are; from the wiki page linked elsewhere in the comments: > The EAR is the largest seismically active rift system on Earth today. The majority of earthquakes occur near the Afar Depression, with the largest typically occurring along or near major border faults.[14] Seismic events in the past century are estimated to have reached a maximum moment magnitude of 7.0.
- giuliomagnifico 4y agoHmm interesting thanks, probably those are zones with very low population density, so an earthquake makes no big damages and we don’t know about them.
- masklinn 4y ago> Interesting, but then why there aren’t earthquakes in Africa? There was an earthquake off of the coast of Kenya 3 days ago: https://ds.iris.edu/ds/nodes/dmc/tools/event/11654975 https://ds.iris.edu/ds/nodes/dmc/tools/event/11654975 However the activity would likely be limited because it's a rift region, aka two plates moving apart from one another (diverging). Large quakes tend to happen in convergent and transform (slip) boundaries, because the two plates deform (due to friction) as they move against one another, loading with energy, then the plates slip (skid), releasing the deformation and the corresponding energy.