14 DAY TRIAL // This May 24, Russia's Far East was hit by an earthquake whose magnitude was reportedly one of 8.3. Several specialists now say that, all things considered, the shake could be the biggest deep temblor thus far recorded by science.
Information shared with the public by the US Geological Survey (USGS) says that the earthquake struck at 608.9km (378.4mi) below the Earth surface, and that its epicenter was located at about 400km (248.5mi) from the city of Petropavlosk-Kamchatsky.
“The May 24, 2013 Mw 8.3 earthquake beneath the Sea of Okhotsk, Russia, occurred as a result of normal faulting at a depth of approximately 600 km,” the USGS write on their official website.
What is interesting is that, according to Nature, earthquakes do not normally hit this deep below the Earth's surface.
This is due to the fact that the rocks located at such depths are too hot and tend to deform rather than break at speeds which would trigger a temblor.
The same source informs us that this 8.3 magnitude earthquake was made possible by the fact that, just beneath the Sea of Okhotsk, a portion of the old Pacific crust is currently descending under Eurasia.
Since its descent is a rather fast one (i.e. approximately 8 cm /3.15 inches per year), the plate gets to stay cool enough to be prone to rupturing and causing an earthquake to occur.
“At the latitude of this earthquake, the Pacific and North America plates are converging at a rate of approximately 78 mm/yr in a west-northwest – east-southeast direction, resulting in the subduction of the Pacific plate beneath Eurasia at the Kuril-Kamchatka trench.”
“The depth and faulting mechanism of the May 24 earthquake indicate that it ruptured a fault deep within the subducting Pacific lithosphere rather than on the shallow thrust interface between the two plates,” the USGS details.
Although the earthquake was felt all the way to Moscow, preliminary reports indicate that the shake caused little damage to the areas it hit.