This Earthquake Lasted More Than 200 Years

Bright Side

There's evidence that an earthquake actually lasted more than 200 years! This wasn't your typical quake – it was a super slow-moving event along the subduction zone. Scientists discovered this by studying ancient sediments and found signs of ongoing seismic activity over centuries. Imagine a constant rumbling under your feet that just never stops. It's a mind-blowing find that changes how we think about earthquakes! Let's check out this and other natural phenomena that lasted more than they should have.   Credit: Wrangellia 0Ma: By Fama Clamosa, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=85176529 Animation is created by Bright Side.  #brightside   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Listen to Bright Side on:  Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/idhttps-podcasts-apple-com-podcast-bright-side/id1554898078 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/brightside/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official/ Tik Tok - https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en Snapchat - https://www.snapchat.com/p/c6a1e38a-bff1-4a40-9731-2c8234ccb19f/1866144599336960  Stock materials (photos, footages and other):  https://www.depositphotos.com  https://www.shutterstock.com  https://www.eastnews.ru  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me

Transcript

00:00The strongest earthquake ever to strike east of the Mississippi River that happened over

00:05200 years ago was never over, according to some scientists.

00:10Most earthquakes last seconds to minutes, and the official record-breaker so far is

00:15a silent one in Sumatra that was going on for 32 years.

00:19This slow-slip event triggered a massive quake and a tsunami, so if it's true that the

00:24New Madrid earthquake is still sending aftershocks, we'll have a new top name for this sad list.

00:31The earthquake started in December of 1811 with a powerful quake in a sparsely populated

00:37part of northeast Arkansas.

00:39They felt the shaking almost 1,000 miles away in the White House, and the tower bells were

00:44ringing in Boston, even further away.

00:46It even made the mighty Mississippi flow backward for a few minutes over new waterfalls formed

00:52by shifted ground.

00:54The town of New Madrid, Missouri completely disappeared in the disaster.

01:00The Earth wouldn't stay still until the end of January the following year, when things

01:05got serious again.

01:06A massive quake hit, this time near the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, right

01:12in the Missouri Boothill.

01:14Geologists believe it was a rupture on the New Madrid Fault, putting even more strain

01:19on the nearby Reelfoot Fault.

01:21That's when people thought it couldn't get worse.

01:24Another two weeks of trembling passed, and the Reelfoot Fault snapped deep beneath New

01:29Madrid.

01:30Down in Tennessee, about 15 miles south of New Madrid, the ground uplift created Reelfoot

01:36Lake.

01:37Steamboats were chugging along the river, with thousands of trees floating and acres

01:41of woods torn apart by the quake.

01:44In St. Louis, Missouri, which is 160 miles away, buildings were badly damaged, and chimneys

01:50fell in Cincinnati, Ohio, 400 miles away.

01:54People all the way in Montreal, Canada, over 1,000 miles away, felt the Earth shake.

02:02Seismologists have registered about 200 small earthquakes in the New Madrid seismic zone

02:07every year since 1974.

02:10Some researchers believe that up to 30% of those were aftershocks from those big quakes

02:15back in 1811 and 1812.

02:18In parts of the U.S. where there's not much tectonic action going on, these aftershocks

02:23could keep rumbling for years, maybe even centuries, after the big ones hit.

02:29Aftershocks are the Earth's way of releasing all that built-up stress from the main quake.

02:33When the ground shakes from the first earthquake, it puts a lot of pressure on the rocks nearby.

02:39And when those rocks can't take it anymore, they crack, causing even more shaking – that's

02:44the aftershock.

02:46And they can be pretty intense, especially right after the main quake, but weaken over

02:51time.

02:54Not all scientists agree that contemporary earthquakes have to do with those from 200

02:59years ago.

03:00We mostly associate faults with those lines where Earth's plates meet.

03:04But there's a whole network of those right under the center of the North American plate.

03:09They're like relics from 750 million years ago, when North America was part of a supercontinent

03:15called Rodinia.

03:17When Rodinia started to break up, it left behind these rifts, weak spots in the Earth's

03:22crust that run deep beneath the modern Midwest.

03:25It could explain the earthquake action.

03:28An international team of geologists decided to take a fresh look at three major earthquakes

03:33that shook North America and end the debate.

03:36They used a new math method called the nearest neighbor.

03:40It says that if earthquakes are too close in space, time, and magnitude to be independent

03:45background events, then one is assumed to have triggered the other.

03:50Depending on how you look at the numbers, somewhere between 10-65% of the recent quakes

03:55in the region could be aftershocks of those historic earthquakes.

04:00And a huge quake that hit Charleston, South Carolina at the end of the 19th century might

04:05explain up to 72% of the earthquakes in the area since then.

04:10But not all places are the same, so the scientific debate continues.

04:17In 1774, British explorer James Cook noticed a glow in the distance.

04:23It was the volcano of Mount Yasur in Vanuatu.

04:27This bad boy had been spewing lava and ash ever since, and it's quite likely that it's

04:32been doing that for way, way longer.

04:34The volcano has been sitting at alert level since October 2016, which means things are

04:40really unsettled around there.

04:42They've even marked off a 2,000-foot radius around the crater to keep people safe.

04:47There have been low-to-moderate outbursts, shooting out ash, gas, and steam, and some

04:52bigger blasts throwing stuff outside the crater.

04:56Satellite images have picked up on some hot spots of sulfur dioxide plumes, showing that

05:00Yasur is still cooking up a big storm down there.

05:05Stromboli, one of the volcanic islands near Sicily, officially has the Guinness World

05:10Record as the longest continuously erupting volcano.

05:14It has been putting on a fiery show for over 2,400 years straight.

05:20Ancient sailors nicknamed it the Lighthouse of the Mediterranean.

05:23Most of the time, Stromboli's just spitting out spatter.

05:27Every now and then, it throws in some lava flows or shoots up some moderately high fountains.

05:33Sometimes, you might even catch a glimpse of steam-driven outbursts.

05:39Over 200 million years ago, the world went through a major makeover, with not one, not

05:45two, but four massive volcanic eruptions changing the game.

05:50It all happened in Renzelia, a large chunk of island that used to be a supermassive volcano

05:55stretching across what's now British Columbia and Alaska.

05:59This volcanic activity might've helped dinosaurs grow from cat-sized critters into giants we

06:05saw in Jurassic Park.

06:07It kicked off a two-million-year rainy season.

06:11It made the whole world hot and humid, and the dinos just loved it.

06:15Researchers dug deep into sediment layers beneath an ancient lake in China to uncover

06:20these secrets.

06:21They found traces of volcanic ash and mercury, clear signs of those epic eruptions.

06:27There were carbon signatures showing huge spikes in carbon dioxide levels, making the

06:32atmosphere toasty and the rain pouring down.

06:35It all happened in four separate pulses, each triggered by those monstrous volcanic blasts.

06:43There's a spot in a national park not too far away from Sydney, Australia, where a fire

06:48has been raging deep underground for at least 6,000 years.

06:53They call it Burning Mountain, and it's a coal seam fire, burning its way through a

06:57layer of coal beneath your surface.

07:00Once these underground fires start, they're pretty much impossible to put out.

07:05This ball of fire is up to 30 feet wide and extremely hot, but there's no flame – it's

07:10smoldering.

07:11The fire has been creeping along at a pace of about 3 feet per year.

07:15A local farmer first spotted it in the 19th century and thought it was a volcano.

07:20The people who have lived here for ages believe this place is sacred.

07:24They've used it for cooking and crafting tools, and tell that it started from a widow's

07:29tears or the torch of a hero.

07:32But experts think it could've been a lightning strike or coal heating up like a summer barbecue

07:37from the interaction with oxygen.

07:42Some say it might've been burning since before the dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

07:46No one knows exactly how long this mountain will burn or in what direction it'll move.

07:52Right now, the coal has enough oxygen to burn for centuries, or even millennia, without

07:57human intervention.

07:58The fire is heating up the mountain like a giant oven, making it crack and crumble, inviting

08:03in more oxygen to feed on.

08:06Even if humans decide to take action, these coal seam fires need truckloads of water and

08:11liquid nitrogen to tame them.

08:13Several years ago, explorers noticed that the smolder was creeping close to a cliff

08:18overlooking a little river.

08:20And depending on what the coal seam decides to do next, we could see some dramatic changes

08:25here in the coming decades.

08:27There could be flames with much more heat, or the coal seam could go deep, extinguish

08:32itself, and smolder out.

08:36That's it for today, so hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like

08:41and share it with your friends.

08:42Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!

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