THIS jaw-dropping moment is the first time ever that a rupture in the Earth’s crust caused by an earthquake was caught on film.
The incredible footage, captured during a 7.7 magnitude earthquake that rocked Myanmar in March, shows the ground literally sliding along two sides of a fault line.
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It was caught on a surveillance camera at a property in Mandalay – the country’s second largest city.
The clip begins with a fairly unassuming view of property’s gate right as the earthquake hits.
As you might expect, the footage begins to tremble as the quake strikes – with the gate shaking and cracks appearing in the concrete.
But it’s what happens in the right hand side of the frame that has caught the eye of scientists all over the world.
The driveway can literally be seen sliding along relative to the ground outside the premises in an absolutely staggering moment.
Scientists say this is the first known moment of an actual fault line motion being caught on film.
California-based earthquake geologist Wendy Bohon told CBC News: “My jaw hit the floor.
“We have computer models of it. We have laboratory models of it.
“But all of those are far less complex than the actual natural system.
“So to see it actually happening was mind-blowing.”
The clip was captured during the devastating earthquake that rocked Myanmar and caused damage as far away as Bangkok.
Some 3,700 people are reported to have died in the quake, according to Myanmar’s ruling military junta.
The rupture is believed to have torn open the earth along the Sagaing Fault.
Assistant professor at Cornell University Judith Hubbard told CBC: “I keep going back and watching it.
“It’s really kind of staggering to see a fault slide in real time, especially for someone like me, who has spent years studying these things, but always from more remote kinds of data, like offsets after the fact or data recorded by sensors.”
The clip was posted to YouTube on May 11 on a channel called 2025 Sagaing Earthquake Archive.
The account features more than 1,000 videos from the day of the devastating quake.
But this clip of the earth rupturing is by far its more viewed video, with more than one million views at time of writing.
One commenter posted under the video: “Good grief. The whole hill shifting. The power tower collapsing. The buildings crumbling. Amazing video.“
Another wrote: “Seems crazy that with billions upon billions of cameras filming everything on this earth that we have anything being recorded for the first time still.“
Hubbard added that this video offers researchers a “a really striking observation”.
“We don’t tend to have instruments right along the fault. They are often disrupted by shaking,” she said.
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