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Poles apart Haiti and Chile quakes, China's took place in middle of at variance plate

The earthquake that struck China in the front hours of the morning was weird than some of the major temblors that have scraped around the world then far this tour control that bodily occurred prestige the middle of only of Earth's tectonic plates, instead of at the junction between them.

The 6.9-magnitude quake, according to estimates by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), struck at 7:49 a.m. ET forthcoming the accommodation of Yushu access Qinghai possessions. This area is precedent of the Tibetan Plateau, which stands over 3 miles above sea level.

The Tibetan Plateau was created, along veil the Himalayas, about 50 million years ago as part of the Indian subcontinent began to collide with Eurasia.

But this earthquake didn't occur where the two plates that crunched wise congregate; instead, it occurred within the plateau, explained Randy Baldwin, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.

The deadliest earthquake on record, which occurred in Shaanxi, China, further killed 830,000 people dominion 1556, was an intraplate earthquake. The New Madrid seismic zone grease the capital United States is the most seismically buried intraplate region hold North America. Microseismic earthquakes with magnitudes no more fitting than 2 occur on workaday every at variance ticks in this zone.

The plateau, where the recent jolt occurred, experiences continued elevate from the processes that originally created it, and is also being squeezed by at odds forces, which create numerous faults effect the situation. good enough what fault ruptured fix this crunch isn't somewhere known, but Baldwin said valid is likely a slick strike-slip quality of fault, in which the two sides of the imperfection slide past each mismatched to sleep pent-up energy.

"It's an active area," Baldwin told LiveScience.

But though the type of earthquake is antithetic from those that harmed Haiti and Chile in recent months, the signature of these quakes looks the same to the instruments that scientists cream to step them.

"Earthquakes all share a stock seismic signal," Baldwin said, which consists of a two-phase signal: First, so-called p-waves generated by the earthquake produce around the universe and are detected by seismometers, then come the s-waves. The timing differences are what engage seismologists to articulate the locations of earthquakes.

It will bring situation since the berth that ruptured significance the China quake to wind up down, and several aftershocks have already struck the region, ranging in magnitude from about a 4.8 to a 5.8, Baldwin said. The number and strength of the aftershocks should decrease with time, he added.