8.2 Magnitude Big Earthquake To Hit Himalayan:MHA experts have warned that earthquakes with a magnitude of 8.0 or more on the Richter scale are likely to hit the Himalayan region.The Himalayas are one of the youngest and most active mountain belts in the world. The range had resulted from the collision between India and Tibet (Eurasia) around 50 million years ago. The process of convergence continues today with the Indian plate diving beneath the Eurasian plate at a steady rate of ~2 cm/year.

Coming 8.2 Magnitude Big Earthquake To Hit Himalayan Region , warn MHA experts

Although the rate is very slow, the process has been continuing steadily over centuries, resulting in accumulation of stresses in subsurface rocks. Once the stress overcomes the frictional barrier within the rock, it ruptures (along a fault) and blocks on either side of the fault slips past each other in a flash, resulting in release of enormous energy.

Some international seismology experts belive that after north eastern part of India was hit by a series of earthquakes, there is a fear of at least four earthquakes to hit Himalaya regions.

Speaking to TOI, National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) director Santosh Kumar said the interconnected plates across Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and India pose a bigger danger, and predicted a disaster of bigger magnitude that awaits hill states and parts of Bihar, UP and even Delhi which fall under the second worst seismic Zone IV classification. The North-East and other hill states fall under severe seismic Zone V.

This could also spell danger for the Northern areas of Pakistan including Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan as the aftershocks could rattle the region and prove to be fatal in nature

Part of the energy gets converted into elastic waves, which in turn causes vibration that propagates through the ground. If the vibrations are strong enough, they can cause tremendous destruction. The whole of the Himalayas have several such faults. Our study suggests that the fault across which the current slips occurred is the Main Himalayan Thrust or MHT.