Tag: Eaarthquake

Shifting plates

At some point the underlying rock gives way and years and years of potential movement all occurs in a couple of seconds.

ad hoc post – 3

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Here’s something very rare, in fact so far it’s unique; a tectonic plate movement caught on video!

The photo is a screen shot from my laptop, I was watching an astounding section of video from a security camera on a property in Thailand, a couple of hundred miles south of the damaging earthquake in Myanmar in March 2025. You may remember this being in the news at the time. Watch from the beginning if you want to see the entire thing (highly recommended). If you just want to see the earth move, skip to 6m 22s.

You’ll see the movement most clearly by watching the ground just outside the fence on the right hand side of the video, but there’s a great deal more to see if you listen to the narration.

Here’s the link to the video.

In simple terms, the ground this side of the fence is supported on one tectonic plate, and the ground on the far side of the fence is supported on a different plate. The plates are slowly moving past one another but rocks are quite strong and lock in place, resisting the sliding motion. The stresses in the rocks increase year on year until they’re powerful enough to fracture even the strongest of materials. So at some point the underlying rock gives way and years and years of potential movement all occurs in a couple of seconds as the rocks move several metres all at once. And at that point, stresses slowly begin to build up again until many years later there’s another earthquake and another sliding motion releasing the stresses once again. And the cycle repeats over and over again.

I hope you enjoyed watching this video as much as I did!

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