sign of earthquake legal injury at Hindu tabernacle in northern India are helping scientist figure the risk of future disasters in the same region . Who says science and religion ca n’t work together ? In this case , though , the news they have collaborated to produce is n’t in effect .
Tectonic fault argument are most life-threatening when they have n’t shifted for a while . Instead of being relinquish in a serial of small- or medium - sized earthquake , air pressure builds up until something really big come about , with annihilating consequences . With only a few decades of detailed monitoring , however , seismologist often struggle to have it off when preceding earthquake occur , and how much pressure was released – all important information for predicting the future .
Mayank Joshiof the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology has turned to Hindu temple to learn about one of Earth ’s most anxiety - inducing stretches of fault line , an expanse known as the Kashmir " seismal gap " . A large earthquake scratch this realm in 1555 , but detail are sketchy and there isdebateas to how much subsequent earthquakes , including four major events since 1905 along the same mistake bank line , impacted the spread .
The possibility of a major earthquake here , perhaps as big asmagnitude 9.0and with the potential to affect trillion of people , has kindle alarm . Joshi looked at the harm done to a number of temple to see what quake they have outlive . Most of the temples were built between the 7th and 10th hundred , presumably with straight walls and flat story .
Establishing the timing of subsequent damage is a challenge , but Joshi say in astatementthat when all the harm go on at once , the issue “ have some consistence in their pattern and preference . ” Things count far more puzzling when several earthquakes have affected the same edifice .
The tilting of this column outside Lakshi Narayan temple is reproducible with it being strike by the 1555 temblor . Mayank Joshi
InSeismological Research Letters , Joshi and his colleagues report on the direction and inclination of an orbit of joust in the structures within tabernacle around Chamba , a townfamousfor its ancient religious buildings . Crack lines and distortions in stone floors were also analyze .
The 1555 earthquake was centered on the Srinagar Valley , but Joshi concluded that the Chamba temples , 200 kilometre ( 124 naut mi ) to the southwest , were affected . However , he found no grounds that more recent events , such as the 1905 Kangra quake , affect this region . Local paper from the early 20th C intimate there was no extra damage to the Chamba temple when nearby towns were strike . “ This further implies that the easterly Kashmir Himalaya segment between Srinagar and Chamba has not been hit by a major earthquake for the last 451 age , " Joshisaid .
If force per unit area in the neighborhood has been build up for such a foresightful time , the next quake could be a big one . Joshi is n’t speculating about a magnitude of 9.0 , the sizing of the Tohoku quake whose tsunami put down Fukushima . However , he dread of “ an earthquake of exchangeable order of magnitude to that of the 2005 Kashmir temblor that devastate the easterly Kashmir . " This magnitude 7.6 issue hit to the south - eastern United States of the gap , killing at least 80,000 people and leaving4 million homeless .
Kangra fort was tilted in the 1905 earthquake , but the same quake did n’t achieve Chamba . Mayank Joshi
