A devastating Myanmar earthquake alludes to what is in store for California

On March 28, an earthquake of devastating magnitude of 7.7 rocked the Myanmar, dividing the sagaing fault at speeds of more than 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) per second. Do you know what other defect looks like the sagain? The fault of San Andreas in California, where seismologists have been waiting for “the big one” for years.

In a study published on August 11 in the journal Pnas, a team of researchers used satellite images of the sagaing flaw movement to improve computer models which predict how similar faults could move in the future. Their research suggests that the flash sliding defects, such as sagaing and San Andreas, could produce earthquakes unlike known seismic events.

The satellites discover a movement of massive defect

“We use remote sensing observations to document the surface deformation caused by the Mandalay earthquake 2025 MW7.7”, wrote the researchers in the article. “This event is a unique case of an extremely long sustainable rupture (~ 510 km (317 miles)) and probably supported by the rather smooth and continuous geometry of this section of the structurally mature sagaing flaw.”

Given the earthquakes recorded from the defect in Sagaing Fault, the researchers had predicted that a strong earthquake would take place on a section of 186 miles (300 kilometers) which had not experienced a large earthquake since 1839. Depending on the hypothesis of the seismic space, such as “Caltech) should possibly slide and” catch up “, according to a declaration of technology (Caltech). Sismologists understood – in March, this section of the sagaing flaw was broken. But the same goes for more than 124 miles (200 km), which means that the fault made more that simply catch up.

Strike sliding defects are made up of borders where earth slabs are exceeded horizontally in opposite directions, accumulating constraint. When the constraint is sufficient, the fault slides and the earth slides quickly, triggering an earthquake. The devastating earthquake of the Myanmar offers an overview of the future seismic potential of the fault of San Andreas, because IT and sagaing flaw are long right slip flaws.

What the earthquake of Myanmar means for the fault of San Andreas

“The study shows that future earthquakes may not simply repeat known earthquakes,” said Jean-Philippe Avouac, director of the Caltech’s Center for Geomechanics and the attenuation of the Geohazards. “The successive breaks of a given fault, even as simple as the defects of Sagain or San Andreas, can be very different and can release even more than the shift deficit from the last event.”

The Mars earthquake in Myanmar “turned out to be an ideal case to apply image correlation methods (techniques to compare images before and after a geological event) which were developed by our research group,” said Solène Antoine, first author of the study and a postdoctoral scholarship holder in Geology at Caltech. “They allow us to measure the movements on the ground in fault.”

The Myanmar earthquake challenges existing defect rupture models

This approach revealed that the 311 mile (500 km) section of the sagaing flaw moved a 9-foot net (3 meters) due to the earthquake, which means that the eastern side of the North-South flaw moved this distance to the south compared to the west side. Researchers argue that the models must take into account the most recent defect shifts, the sliding location and the sliding distance to provide enlightened seismic risk forecasts for specific time periods – for example, the next 10 years – and not any time given for an area. This is what current models do, mainly using earthquake statistics.

“In addition, historical recordings are generally far too short for statistical models to represent the entire range of possible earthquakes and possible models in recurrence of earthquakes,” said Avouac. “Physics based models provide an alternative approach with the advantage that they could, in principle, be set to observations and used for forecasts dependent on time.”

Although researchers still cannot predict exactly when an earthquake strikes, each new observation helps us to understand and, hopefully, better prepare for natural disasters that continue to claim lives all over the world.