India earthquake: What are tectonic plates and fault lines? Everything you need to know

For some, the world appeared to be falling apart Tuesday night when a jolty earthquake of magnitude 6.6 struck parts of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. People in India were seen rushing to the streets with netizens inundating social media with their personal experiences. Hindu Kush in Afghanistan was the epicentre. Let's look at the reasons that sporadically scare the living daylights out of people in the Indian subcontinent by literally shaking the ground beneath their feet.

What are tectonic plates? Which tectonic plate caused the Indian earthquake?

Tectonic plates are gigantic pieces of the Earth's crust and uppermost mantle. Large rock slabs called tectonic plates, which separate the Earth's crust, are continuously moving and changing the planet's topography. The theory of plate tectonics implies that the lithosphere, the planet's outer shell, is divided into a number of plates that move across the rocky interior of the planet and on top of its softcore (mantle). The movement and friction between different tectonic plates cause massive earthquakes.

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What is a fault line?

A fault line is a substantial break in the earth's surface. Along fault lines, earthquakes frequently happen.The Hindu Kush region is highly active tectonically with deep (between 70 and 300 km) and strong seismicity. The largest slip rate, 26 mm/y, is inferred along the sinistral Chaman transform fault south of the Hindu Kush.

Due to the fact that the Chaman transform fault's slip is dispersed across multiple fault systems in the north, it looks to be influencing continental deep-subduction in the Pamir region. In simple words, the tremors in the Indian subcontinent occur when the Indian plate collides with the Eurasian plate along the faultlines present near the Hindu Kush region.

What are aftershocks?

As the crust readjusts to the changes in tension, there will be numerous aftershocks following big earthquakes. After the first incident, they can go on for days or even years. For example,during Turkey's earthquakes, three more earthquakes of greater than magnitude 6.0 were registered in the first twelve hours following the initial tremor. There have been hundreds of aftershocks with lesser magnitudes, the first of which was a 6.7 that occurred barely 11 minutes after the first earthquake.