Seismologist Tatevosyan explained the cause of the earthquake in Turkey

The assumption that the strongest earthquake in Turkey in the last 80 years, which occurred early in the morning on Monday, February 6, and subsequent events are associated with a slowdown in the speed of rotation of the core of our planet, is false. He made this statement in an interview withNewspaper Ru» Deputy Director of the Institute of Physics of the Earth. O.Yu. Schmidt on Engineering Seismology and Seismic Hazard Assessment, Head of the Laboratory of Strong Earthquakes and Seismometry Ruben Tatevosyan.

As before informed “MK”, ​​a study by Chinese scientists Yi Yang and Xiaodong Song has recently made a lot of noise in the Western press. They stated that the core of our planet has greatly slowed down its movement or almost stopped. In their opinion, after that it should begin to rotate in the opposite direction. This process may be accompanied by an increased manifestation of various natural phenomena, including earthquakes. At the time of publication, journalists from Western publications began to talk about how the data received by specialists from the PRC could affect the processes taking place on the planet. And in the last two days, this publication was remembered on social networks and users began to actively argue that the phenomenon described by Chinese scientists was the cause of such a powerful earthquake in Turkey and the seismic activity in the region in general.

“The core has nothing to do with it,” Ruben Tatevosyan is sure. – It just slows down its rotation in relation to the outer shell. We can only say that there is an extremely small deceleration, so this process could not affect the earthquake in Turkey in any way.”

The scientist recalled that the process of slowing down the rotation of the Earth’s core began to occur in the 70s. However, very powerful Chile or Alaska earthquakes have happened before, although they were very serious seismic events.

“To make such big “discoveries”, you need to know a very short history of earthquakes,” Tatevosyan stressed. “The more you know, the more immune you are to these kinds of hypotheses.”

According to the seismologist, the earthquakes in Turkey that have occurred in the past two days occurred on a well-defined active fault. Seismic activity will continue there. “This piece is part of the East Anatolian fault system,” the scientist emphasized. “This is a key location that has always been characterized by high seismic activity.” According to Tatevosyan, aftershocks and aftershocks will continue to occur there, but they will no longer be so strong.

Earlier Monday morning, February 6, in the south-east of Turkey, there was the most powerful earthquake since 1939 in this country with a magnitude of 7.8 on the Richter scale (according to other sources – 7.4). Its epicenter was located near the large city of Gaziantep, which is home to more than one million people. The tremors were also felt in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and even on the border of Armenia and Georgia. According to Orkhan Tatar, the director of the earthquake and risk reduction department of the emergency management department, more than 3.38 thousand people died due to the cataclysm, over 20.4 thousand were injured. The exact number of victims continues to be established, as there are many missing. .In total, 5575 buildings collapsed due to the cataclysm. At the same time, seismic activity in the region does not subside. In particular, during the last two days, the second and third earthquakes occurred, the last with a magnitude of 5.6 points.