FAULT LINES AROUND THE WORLD
Discover the dangers and benefits of Earth’s cracked crust. Is there a fault line beneath your feet?
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AILSA HARVEY
The San Andreas Fault that runs through California is around 750 miles long
Our planet may look sturdy, but its outermost layer of solid rock – the crust – is actually fractured into massive uneven segments. These segments are known as tectonic plates, which float on the semi-fluid mantle below. All of these plates are constantly moving at a very slow rate of around 1.5 to 15 centimetres per year – that’s a similar speed to the growth of your fingernails. This means that, inevitably, the plates interact with each other at their boundaries. As plates move, they can pull apart, push together – causing land to rise in the middle – or slide past each other. These movements cause breaks in the crust, mostly along tectonic plate boundaries.