CCTV footage captures video of an earthquake fault in motion

[chrononaut]

Original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77ubC4bcgRM

Paper: 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=CfKFK4-HNmk

[blinding-streak]

How 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]

By 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.

[bapak]

Area doesn't just disappear. I suppose that depending on what's on the land, your area might have a few more potatoes from your northern neighbors and fewer carrots you generously gifted to your southern neighbors.

You could alternatively just deal with your new jagged plot.

Worst case scenario, you're now the owner of the new Turkish Canyon.

[rajnathani]

I was thinking more about in terms of GPS co-ordinates of Google Maps, etc.

[gnabgib]

Discussion (81 points, 3 days ago, 13 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44655128

[dang]

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

Earthquake Causes 2.5-Meter Ground Slip in First-Ever Footage - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44655128 - July 2025 (18 comments)

First fault rupture ever filmed [video] - 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 - May 2025 (3 comments)

[netbioserror]

Terrifying. 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]

in/s? Inches per second, or something else? One inch per second is the speed of an excited snail.

[jagaerglad]

in 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]

This 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!

[v3ss0n]

4.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?

[throw123xz]

The 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.

[jofer]

It'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.

[ranger_danger]

Isn't this news several months old?

[schobi]

A 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

[andrewflnr]

It seems like the analysis is the new part.

[ofalkaed]

Quadrennial myopia.

[varispeed]

It 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]

How 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#Universi...

[moomoo11]

Silly question but how does this affect mapping software? Or is the movement insignificant that it doesn’t matter

[nullhole]

It'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...

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.

[praptak]

It 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-...

[kristopolous]

I know nothing so help me here. Why is this so rare? Aren't earthquakes, cameras, and monitoring of them pretty common?

[irjustin]

Videos 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).

[KennyBlanken]

The 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]

Makes me wonder how much energy the movement "released". Crazy.

[johnnienaked]

Incredible

[duxup]

https://youtu.be/dbEYe65eDdw?feature=shared

[dang]

Added to the top text. Thanks!

[cibyr]

So many autoplaying videos on the page, and none of them are the video that the article is about.

[DavidSJ]

This is the original video, for those looking: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=77ubC4bcgRM

[fuenaksofu]

Interesting. I see no other video. I use brave so maybe it blocked all the ads and noise.

[Grimblewald]

The article is aweful as well. How could they open with a "screenshot of the movement" with a straight face?

[falseprofit]

It’s the first YouTube embed in the article.

[everdrive]

javascript claims another victim. It's not good to run javascript by default.

[dzdt]

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43959274