• Question: how did the earthquakes make japan move?

    Asked by katieshannon to David on 19 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: David Pyle

      David Pyle answered on 19 Mar 2011:

      Have a look at my other answer on this as well – http://ias.im/31.1089

      Basically, the tectonic plate that Japan sits on is moving towards the east, relative to the Pacific plate. For some time (several hundred years?) the Pacific plate has become stuck, where it should be sliding under the northern part of Japan. Small earthquakes in the area over the past few years haven’t released enough of the stored up ‘strain’, so eventually the part where the two plates were stuck broke, and the plates jumped past each other (by up to 15 metres in places), releasing quite a lot of the stored up energy as they did so.

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