Thursday, September 26, 2013

A mysterious island emerges after the earthquake in Pakistan - Metronews

This is one of the unintended consequences of the tragic earthquake that struck Tuesday Balochistan province (southwest) in Pakistan. About 400 kilometers from the epicenter, opposite the port of Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea, an island appeared under the astonished gaze of the inhabitants. The violence of the quake, with a magnitude of 7.7, has given rise to a cluster of rocks, mud and sand than twenty meters high explored by curious local fishermen.

imposing island, about 100 meters long and 40 meters wide has also hosted a team of scientists from the Pakistan Institute of Oceanography that detected on the surface of methane gas. An index that provides an explanation of this strange phenomenon. It would be indeed a “mud volcano” mound of sediment pushed to the surface under the pressure of methane gas in the quake, told AFP Gary Gibson, a seismologist at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

“an unusual event”

“This has already happened in the past in this region, but it is an extraordinary event, very rare, I’ve never heard of anything of the sort,” at such a distance from the epicenter, the expert continues.

Indeed, several years ago, a powerful earthquake of 8.1 magnitude that struck the Makran area, in the same province of Baluchistan, gave birth to a similar phenomenon that the people were baptized ” Zalzala Koh “(” The Mountain of the earthquake “). Like this unstable ephemeral island, new mound appeared off Gwadar should disappear within a few weeks.

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