6 ms·
CCTV footage captures video of an earthquake fault in motion
Original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77ubC4bcgRM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77ubC4bcgRM
Paper: https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/ssa/tsr/article/5/3/281/659624/Curved-Fault-Slip-Captured-by-CCTV-Video-During https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/ssa/tsr/article/5/3/281/659...
Analyses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbEYe65eDdw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbEYe65eDdw, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfKFK4-HNmk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfKFK4-HNmk
- gnabgib 1y agoDiscussion (81 points, 3 days ago, 13 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44655128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44655128
- dang 1y agoThanks! Macroexpanded: Earthquake Causes 2.5-Meter Ground Slip in First-Ever Footage - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44655128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44655128 - July 2025 (18 comments) First fault rupture ever filmed [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44305403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44305403 - June 2025 (1 comment) First fault movement ever filmed. M7.9 surface rupture near Thazi, Myanmar [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43959274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43959274 - May 2025 (3 comments)
- ranger_danger 1y agoIsn't this news several months old?
- andrewflnr 1y agoIt seems like the analysis is the new part.
- schobi 1y agoA previous discussion of the M7.7 quake in Burma/Myanmar from March 28, 2025 was provided by Sean Wilsey. He explained the earthquake and context and discussed the CCTV footage around 6:30 https://youtu.be/CfKFK4-HNmk https://youtu.be/CfKFK4-HNmk
- dang 1y agoLink added to the top text. Thanks!
- ofalkaed 1y agoQuadrennial myopia.
- netbioserror 1y agoTerrifying. I program automated vibration analysis for blasting, and a very powerful explosive blast will feature particle velocities (the direct corollary for power) in the single-digit in/s range (~0.02-0.13 m/s) . This peak particle velocity is 20-150x higher than the peaks we see from the most powerful blasts we measure, if they're at all qualitatively comparable. And of course, the earthquake energy source is many magnitudes larger and much, much further away, deep in the crust, with the wavefront already having passed through miles of solid rock. We measure blasts from at most a few hundred meters away.
- card_zero 1y agoin/s? Inches per second, or something else? One inch per second is the speed of an excited snail.
- csours 1y agoin soil, not air.
- card_zero 1y agoYikes, I see.
- Aachen 1y agoMust be inches per second because 1–10 of those is 0.025–0.25 m/s so that matches the parentheses
- netbioserror 1y agoThis is the solid particles in the ground moving in place. As the wave passes through, any given volume of ground is displaced somewhat. In a balanced low-intensity wave, the soil or rock gets jostled around a bit. In a high-intensity balanced wave, the ground is yanked back and forth, potentially damaging foundations or buildings above the foundation. Particles will be displaced, but not permanently, with a net of 0. In an unbalanced wave, the earth is permanently displaced in a particular direction. We can measure that net displacement in a particular direction using an anti-derivative if the total average velocity is nonzero (if we included negative velocities around a given axis). Earthquakes, of course, tend to have nonzero net displacement, and thus an extremely biased velocity waveform along a particular axis. So in fact, the soil beneath you vibrating back and forth at 1 to 5 inches per second is not fun. At 118 inches per second? Catastrophe.
- kristopolous 1y agoI know nothing so help me here. Why is this so rare? Aren't earthquakes, cameras, and monitoring of them pretty common?
- irjustin 1y agoVideos of earthquakes are common enough. It's the video of the fault line itself fracturing that's so interesting. We know where the fault lines are, so we generally avoid building anything major near them because... well earthquakes. Hence no other videos of actual fault line fractures (vs general street ones).
- zellyn 1y agoThe California Memorial Stadium is built directly on a fault line, right?
- moomoo11 1y agoSilly question but how does this affect mapping software? Or is the movement insignificant that it doesn’t matter
- praptak 1y agoIt does but it's just one of many factors that make maps diverge from the ground truth: https://nautil.us/what-happens-to-google-maps-when-tectonic-plates-move-237678/ https://nautil.us/what-happens-to-google-maps-when-tectonic-...
- nullhole 1y agoIt's tracked by some national agencies, for example NZ has a deformation model. This link has a summary & links to some lectures about the deformation model: https://www.linz.govt.nz/guidance/geodetic-system/coordinate-systems-used-new-zealand/geodetic-datums/new-zealand-geodetic-datum-2000-nzgd2000/new-zealand-geodetic-datum-2000-deformation-model https://www.linz.govt.nz/guidance/geodetic-system/coordinate... Metres of movement would definitely be significant for a lot of mapping use cases. This is why the time component of any coordinate measurement is important, both due to earthquakes as well as plain old plate motion.
- cibyr 1y agoSo many autoplaying videos on the page, and none of them are the video that the article is about.
- DavidSJ 1y agoThis is the original video, for those looking: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=77ubC4bcgRM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=77ubC4bcgRM
- praptak 1y agoPSA: it's easy to miss on the first watch because the big action happens in the background behind the gate.
- wizardforhire 1y agoThanks, first watch all I saw was the driveway crack appear. Second pass could be mistaken for a parallax effect as the entire background shifts forward!
- nobrains 1y agoSo, I recommend seeing it in 3 passes. 1st pass, see the right 1/3rd area of the video. It shows the 2 sides moving. Then see the middle 1/3rd area of the video. It shows both the movement and the rupture in the ground. Then see the left 1/3rd area of the video. It shows the rupture on the ground clearly.
- frauhaus 1y agoAnd here’s the related paper: https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/ssa/tsr/article/5/3/281/659624/Curved-Fault-Slip-Captured-by-CCTV-Video-During https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/ssa/tsr/article/5/3/281/659...
- dang 1y agoLink added to the top text. Thanks!
- v3ss0n 1y ago4.x l to 5.x earthquakes are still happening a few times a week and the area couldn't recover from disaster. last week, one 4 stories building next to my friend house collapsed,near Mandalay. Does that mean Myanmar is now an active zone?
- jofer 1y agoIt's always been active. The Sagaing fault is a plate boundary. You're seeing the "side" of the Indian subcontinent slamming northward into the Eurasian plate.
- 1718627440 1y agoMaybe they should declare war on India until the stop that.
- v3ss0n 1y agoWe are already at fullscale revolution .. civil war ..
- throw123xz 1y agoThe rules for building in these areas should be way more strict than they are. A 4.x earthquake in Japan is just another normal day for them.
- v3ss0n 1y agoRules? well .. we don't even have a real government now. The country is in revolution. Who writes the Rule is whoever who have more firepower or whoever who is closer to Junta. None of the rules works, everything can be bribed to junta. None of the thing that rational government does works here anymore. Whoever come inspect the buildings can be bribed with a few hundreds dollars.
- varispeed 1y agoIt is remarkable how widespread of CCTV has helped in that field. Imagine being a scientist and never actually experience or see the earthquake you are into researching. That be like going to place where they are common and then sit a year or so and anticipating. Is it coming? Should be any time soon? Then when it happens you are in the toilet and have seen nothing apart from painting falling off the wall.
- latexr 1y agoHow about waiting over a decade and be getting a drink when it happens? Then waiting another decade and a technical problem preventing it from having been recorded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_drop_experiment#University_of_Queensland_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_drop_experiment#Universi...
- qntmfred 1y agoalso reminds me of: in 1663 Scottish mathematician James Gregory figured out that you could calculate the distance between the Earth and the Sun by making measurements during the transit of Mercury or Venus across the Sun. You get much more accurate results with Venus, but the next transit of Venus wasn't predicted to be until 1761 and 1769. In 1760 French mathematician Guillaume Le Gentil sailed from France to India to make observations of the transit, but due to weather and delays, he was still on the ship when summer 1761 arrived and he missed his chance to make his measurements. So he stayed in India for another 8 years. And then on the day of the 1769 transit, it was cloudy and he missed it again. So he went back to France where he found out he had long ago been declared dead, his possessions had been seized and his wife had married somebody else. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDSM-CtYzxY&t=5m29s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDSM-CtYzxY&t=5m29s
- macintux 1y agoFascinating story, thanks. How many astronomers have had a play and an opera written about them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Le_Gentil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Le_Gentil
- blinding-streak 1y agoHow does property/real estate ownership work in this case? Seeing the land shift so clearly by several feet makes me wonder. What was on your property is now on my property!
- widforss 1y agoBy the discussions I've had with surveyors in my country (Sweden), any coordinate descriptions of properties are deferred to the physical markers in the ground (cairns for older property, metal stakes for newer ones). This would only be an issue in properties that have never been surveyed (and marked) at all. Straight borders might become crooked if they cross the crack though.
- xattt 1y agoIt sure would suck to lose half your property to the earth suddenly saying screw you.
- MichaelZuo 1y agoYou could lose all your property, without compensation too, if your unlucky enough to have a big enough meteorite crash into it.
- dzdt 1y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43959274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43959274
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- duxup 1y agohttps://youtu.be/dbEYe65eDdw?feature=shared https://youtu.be/dbEYe65eDdw?feature=shared
- dang 1y agoAdded to the top text. Thanks!
- jagaerglad 1y agoin a sense it's mind blowing that we had images of stars being born, black holes, cells dividing etc before earthquake faults in motion. Like how the process of how they happen have only been inferred until now
- schoen 1y agoThis reminds me of the idea that we know more about some aspects of space than about the ocean. At least, more people have been to the moon than to the deepest point of the ocean!
- KennyBlanken 1y agoThe entire camera clearly dips and then rises during the fault slide. It's not the fault moving in a curved path, it's the camera dipping and rising. You can clearly see that just by placing your finger or mouse cursor on any feature in the video.
- apeters 1y agoMakes me wonder how much energy the movement "released". Crazy.
- johnnienaked 1y agoIncredible
- torium 1y ago[dead]