GEOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -You’ve seen earthquakes depicted in movies where the ground opens up and swallows people and cars and homes into a large, gaping hole. That’s just a myth. The ground moves across a fault during an earthquake, not away from it, according to the Earthquake Country Alliance.

Detailed explanation-2: -It’s a common myth that during an earthquake, the earth cracks open and people, cars, and animals can fall into those cracks. The earth does not crack open like the Grand Canyon. The earth moves and rumbles and, during that movement, small cracks can form.

Detailed explanation-3: -The energy radiates outward from the fault in all directions in the form of seismic waves like ripples on a pond. The seismic waves shake the earth as they move through it, and when the waves reach the earth’s surface, they shake the ground and anything on it, like our houses and us!

Detailed explanation-4: -The majority of the mantle, however, cannot be cracked open. It’s solid, sure, but it’s so hot and squashed together that any attempt to split it would be like putting a dent in a highly pressurized tube of toothpaste. Instantly, mantle material would rush in to fill the gap and the shock would be absorbed.