Two large cracks in the Earth's crust opened near the Turkey-Syria border, after two powerful earthquakes rocked the region on Monday (Feb 6) local time, killing more than 20,000 people.
U.K. Researcher The UK's Center for the Observation & Modeling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes & Tectonics (COMET) found the crack by comparing images of the area near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea taken by the Sentinel-1 satellite before and after the devastating earthquake occurred.
As quoted by us from Space, the longer crack extends 300 kilometers, to the northeast of the northeastern tip of the Mediterranean Sea. The crack was created by the first of two major quakes, with a magnitude of 7.8.
The second crack, 125 km long, appeared during the second earthquake, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake which was slightly lighter than the first and occurred about nine hours later.
According to COMET boss, professor Tim Wright, such fragments usually appear after a strong earthquake. However, both of these gaps are so long that they provide evidence of the amount of energy released by the earthquake.
"The bigger the earthquake, the bigger the fault. This earthquake fault is one of the longest. It is also very unusual for two large earthquakes to occur within hours of each other," he explained.
The movement of tectonic plates that cause earthquakes occurs in such a way that cracks are clearly visible in the surface, passing through cities and in some cases right through buildings.
Local scientists shared photos of surface cracks on Twitter, confirming what the satellite observed from space.
More than 20,000 people have been reported dead, and many may still be buried under rubble as rescue operations are moving slowly, especially in Syria, which has been ravaged by years of armed conflict.