Earthquake shifts Kathmandu by 3 metres

28 April 2015 09:55 am

The earthquake that devastated Nepal and left thousands of people dead shifted the earth beneath Kathmandu by up to several metres south, but the height of Mount Everest likely stayed the same, experts said today.

According to early seismological data obtained from sound waves which travel through Earth after an earthquake, the ground beneath the capital Kathmandu may have moved about three metres (10 feet) southward, said University of Cambridge tectonics expert James Jackson.

His analysis was similar to that of Sandy Steacy, head of the physical sciences department at the University of Adelaide.

"It's likely that the earthquake occurred on the Himalayan Thrust fault, a plate boundary that separates the northern moving Indian sub-continent from Eurasia," said Steacy.

"The fault dips about 10 degrees to the north-northeast. The relative movement across the fault zone was on the order of three metres at its greatest, just north of Kathmandu."

The fault lies between two tectonic plates -- one bearing India pushing northward into a plate carrying Europe and Asia at a rate of about two centimetres (0.8 inches) per year -- the process that created the Himalayas in the first place. (NDTV)