Seismostatic expedition of the Moscow State University Mehmat to Armenia. July 1089. Participant's history

Seismostatic expedition of the Moscow State University Mehmat to Armenia. Six months after the Spitak earthquake. July 1089.

I have to tell you what it is. Our planet consists of two hemispheres, which rotate very slowly relative to each other by several centimeters per year. The line of contact of these two conditional spheres runs along the Alpine belt of the Earth. These are the Cordillera, the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, access to the Iberian Peninsula, then through the Alps to the Caucasus, then through the Hindu Kush to the Pamirs and Himalayas, then to Japan, the Kuriles, Kamchatka and again connect with the Cordillera in the Bering Strait. It is these zones of our planet that are prone to the most powerful earthquakes and tsunamis, since along this conventional line these two hemispheres "rotate" in relation to each other.

These developments are not immediately apparent. Terrestrial rocks are quite hard and ossified. Tension accumulates in them for years. But one day, a huge crack several kilometers deep appears in the earth, and two land masses instantly shift by an average meter relative to each other. Such a crack can reach a length of several tens of kilometers. It is such a crack that causes earthquakes and tsunamis. No one knows when and where it will form next.

In December 1988, it happened in Armenia. At that time, my colleagues and I from the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR walked several kilometers along this crack (its total length was about 30 kilometers). The earth broke apart and moved along this the seam. As a result, three large Armenian cities were destroyed. One of the photos shows the only "surviving" multi-storey building in Spitak. All the others formed an accordion...