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Antarctic shaken by tens of thousands of tremors over 3 months

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The characteristically stable Antarctic continent has been shaken by an unprecedented spate of 30,000-50,000 tremors in the last three months, Israel365 News reported Monday. According to a report by the University of Chile’s National Seismological Centre, the wave of tremors was concentrated in the 60 miles wide Bransfield Strait which extends 300 miles from the Antarctic Peninsula in a north-easterly direction.

Located at the southern pole of the earth, the Bransfield strait is home to volcanoes and volcanic areas, and a number of tectonic plates and microplates also meet near it. Nevertheless, researchers at the Seismological Centre have said that this high volume of tremors within such a short period of time is “extremely unusual,” Weather.com reported.

“Most of the seismicity is concentrated at the beginning of the sequence, mainly during the month of September, with more than a thousand earthquakes a day,” the Seismological Centre said.

Before the tremors began, the strait only widened by 0.30 inches a year. But since the tremors have become so frequent it has expanded by 6 inches a year, I365 noted. Investigators are reportedly not yet clear as to the cause of the tremors.

“[The current expansion of the strait is] a 20-fold increase, which suggests that right this minute, the Shetland Islands are separating more quickly from the Antarctic Peninsula,” Seismological Centre director Sergio Barrientos said in a statement.