"NASA Releases Images of Pakistan's "Earthquake Island"
One of the satellite images of the new island:
Called Zalzala Jazeera, or a an earthquake island, the terrestrial formation is found 380 kilometers from the earthquake’s epicenter in Paddi Zirr Bay near Swadar, Pakistan in the Arabian Sea.
The island rose out of the water during a 7.7-magnitude earthquake that struck Balochistan, just 69 km north-northeast of Awaran - the nearest Pakistani city - on 24 September 2013. Over 300,000 people were affected by the quake, which caused over 500 deaths, and some 21,000 houses were destroyed.
Scientists say the island is nothing more than just a pile of mud, sand and solid rock that was caused by the forces of highly pressurized gas.
“The island is really just a big pile of mud from the seafloor that got pushed up. This area of the world seems to see so many of these features because the geology is correct for their formation. You need a shallow, buried layer of pressurized gas—methane, carbon dioxide, or something else—and fluids. When that layer becomes disturbed by seismic waves (like an earthquake), the gases and fluids become buoyant and rush to the surface, bringing the rock and mud with them,” Bill Barnhart, a geologist at the US Geological Survey told NASA’s Earth Observatory.
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