The 2023 earthquake in eastern Turkey was a double earthquake. This was explained by seismologist Luca Dal Zilio in an interview with ETH News, a publication of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.
According to the scientist, the earthquakes were of the same strength (7.8 and 7.6 points), with a difference of only nine hours. These events can be called binary because the centers of these earthquakes are located at a distance smaller than the size of their rupture and they occur faster than the repetition of shocks that can occur due to the movement of the lithospheric plates.
It is also incorrect to call the second earthquake an aftershock because it was almost as severe as the first and occurred along another nearby fault. According to Bath’s law, the strongest aftershock is usually about 1.2 magnitude smaller than the main earthquake. The first earthquake probably contributed to the increase in the static voltage in the area where the second earthquake occurred. While this increase was small, it was enough to trigger a second series of aftershocks just hours later. This indicates that both faults are under critical stress. The first earthquake may have dealt the final blow to the second fault belt, which had accumulated tension for decades and was already critically loaded.
It is for these reasons that this earthquake is of great interest to seismologists, despite the death of an enormous number of people. Scientists hope this will help to understand and predict such phenomena.
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