Pakistan: an island emerges in the Arabian Sea after the earthquake - Le Parisien

Do not call Atlantis, the legendary lost continent, but “Zalzala Koh,” as has been dubbed the Pakistanis. The powerful earthquake in Pakistan occurred on Tuesday gave birth to.

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.. an “island” out suddenly to the surface of the Arabian Sea, hundreds of miles from the epicenter.

“This is not a small thing, but a great thing that came out from under the water “still rubs his eyes Muhammad Rustam, a resident of Gwadar, Pakistan strategic port located some 400 kilometers south of the epicenter of the 7.7-magnitude earthquake Tuesday that shook the province of Balochistan and claimed hundreds of lives.

VIDEO. The island out of the waters in Pakistan

Wednesday, thousands of people watched a curious eye this huge mound of about twenty feet high, with a forty meters in length and a hundred wide, planted in the Arabian Sea near the coast of Gwadar. Intrigued fishermen had approached Tuesday of this maritime protuberance loving amateur photographers flashes

This is not the first time an earthquake has surprising consequences. Magnitude quake 9.0 causing the devastating tsunami in Japan in 2011 was a power that it had moved about 17 centimeters axis of the Earth. Result, according to NASA: This day was shortened by 1.8 microseconds. Same after an earthquake in Chile in February 2010: the day had lost 1.26 millionth of a second after shocks of 8.8 on the Richter scale

The scientific explanation

Behind the fascination of “New Gwadar Island” also hides a scientific explanation related to the movement of tectonic plates and “mud volcanoes”.

A team of the Pakistan Institute of Oceanography visited this island and found high levels of methane. “Our team discovered the bubbles rising to the surface of the island that caught fire near a match,” said Mohammad Danish researcher in this public institution.

For Gary Gibson, a seismologist at the University of Melbourne, Australia, the appearance of this island hundreds of miles from the epicenter of the earthquake was “very strange.” “This has already happened in the past in this region, but it is a very rare event unusual, I’ve never heard of anything like this,” at such a distance from the epicenter, he said.

This “island” is actually a “mud volcano” mound of sediment pushed to the surface under the pressure of methane gas in the quake, says scientist . The island is therefore not a fixed structure but a pile of mud and rocks that will disintegrate over time, unlike the growth of permanent rocky mounds tectonic plates meet.

The old Gwadar still remember the earthquake of magnitude 8.1 in the area of ??Makran Balochistan. But this powerful earthquake had also given birth to a similar “island,” says Gary Gibson.

The fate of the island

people of Gwadar have already dubbed “Koh Zalzala” – “The mountains quake” in French – this strange pile destined to disappear 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

“This will disperse the island. Over the next weeks or months, “said Shamim Ahmed Shaikh, director of the department of geology at the University of Karachi, Pakistan’s southern metropolis. To eventually be reborn one day, in case of future devastating earthquakes.