Something Major Geologically is Happening DEEP Under Italy...

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Hey everyone, geoysicist Stefon Burns here with some breaking news. We just had a magnitude 6.2 earthquake strike Italy. This being at a depth of 247 kilometers and this is the largest earthquake to strike the great nation of Italy in more than a decade. So this is a big shaker though not really widely felt because of its depth at 247 km. So some reports came in of light shaking in this area here. But in general, this is not a big earthquake. It's not a destructive earthquake and it's not an earthquake where you have to worry about a tsunami. Though it did occur off the coast at 247 km down. This was taking place in the mantle of the earth. So you have earth's crust and then you have this boundary zone in between the crust and the mantle known as the athenosphere. And then you have the mantle. And of course there's the upper mantle, lower mantle, outer core, inner core as you go down towards the center.

[00:00:57]So being in the mantle makes this a very unique earthquake. And what's especially notable in my mind as I see this is that this follows up after what was previously the strongest earthquake to strike Italy in a decade, which I was there for. Though I also did not feel a magnitude 6 on the 9th of March because this one occurred even deeper at 375 km below the surface. So there were almost no reports of shaking for that one. That also occurring off the coast. But two back-to- back earthquakes in a short time frame geologically after more than 10 years where we didn't really have any magnitude 6 or greater earthquakes is certainly a notable development and it's speaking to the changing dynamics deep in the earth because of plate tectonics.

[00:01:45]We have the African plate right here. If I really zoom out, we can see that the African plate is a big plate. Okay, we have the African plate moving north, smashing into the Eurasian plate. And it's specifically right here with the Ionian Sea and the Tyrion Sea where you get subduction of the African plate underneath the Eurasian plate forming the Campanian arc which is why you have so many volcanoes here in Italy. I can turn on some of the major ones there. We see Etna. We see Vuvius. Campy Fra super volcano. This magnitude 6 occurring basically right underneath Campy Fra which is why I covered that the moment it happened back in March. But we also see Marceli volcano here. This is a back arc spreading center underwater volcano created from the subduction of the African plate underneath the Eurasian plate. And so we see Marceli volcano there. A very large structure though the actual volcano itself is just this ridge which is still not small. We measure this it's about 50 kilometers across.

[00:02:53]All right. So that's pretty big. And if we measure all the way across in this caldera looking structure we get 130 kilometers or even if we go to here 110 kilometers. So Marceli volcano is quite significant. We see this older back arc spreading center there because of course the plate is being generated and you get this movement. So this is from like four million years ago. It's now quiescent.

[00:03:20]It's moved off further to the northwest.

[00:03:25]But this magnitude 6.2 coming in here around Calabria south of this magnitude 6. But in general you see how they are in roughly forming this perimeter zone around Marceli and also with all the volcanoes here. We have Etna, we have Stromboli and other volcanoes with these uh island volcanoes here, right? Quite a bit of activity we get from them. Uh and then you go up and you get Vuvius and you get Campy Free. So big magnitude 6.2 earthquake has just struck Italy. Let's jump right into it. We'll begin by quickly examining our latest earthquakes according to the USGS for the past week.

[00:04:06]Magnitude 4.5 or greater. And we see the 6.2 there coming in right near the top for newest earthquakes. I'm reporting on this for you as soon as I can. Just happened. 5.4 Indonesia has just struck right afterwards. But if we go here and sort by largest magnitude for the week, we now see this 6.2 holding the top slot and we see these other magnitude 6 underneath it. So, we haven't been having a tremendous amount of seismic activity. Seismic activity has been moderate for the past week, but the 6.2 is big. And notice the depth on that.

[00:04:40]247 km. That's quite quite deep. So, this is a notable development for Italy, especially when you take that magnitude 6 into the equation. Here we see our did you feel it intensity map for this magnitude 6. Now, this just happened, so we're going to get more reports with time. Here we see our responses right now and we see that there's like 20 responses. But because it was so deep, people really aren't feeling this and the one the people that did feel it reported as like light shaking or effectively really weak shaking. No damage is going to result from this earthquake. But because it is deep, you see that some of these reports are pretty far away because the hypoenter is so far down. That seismic energy radiates out in all directions. And that still happens if the hypoenter is very close to the surface, but has a better ability to kind of maintain its amplitude going out. So we see these light and weak reports all across this part of southern Italy, even some with uh Sicily there. So this is quite significant. If we look at our moment tensor plot, this tells us what type of earthquake this was. And to keep this really simple, we look at these numbers right here. Okay, there's two fault plane solutions because based off of the waveform data, there's two potential uh fault planes that are ruptured along and we don't know unless there's more geological context. And with these occurring in the mantle, we really can't say which one it is. Okay, but we see this this earthquake is a bit unusual as you'll see. The first fault plane solution has a strike of 259 degrees and that right there for the second one is 168 degrees. So that's like the the strike angle, like the compass direction, you could say. The second number in the list is the the angle of the fault. So here we have it being exactly 90°, a perfect vertical fault, 247 km below surface. Here we see for our second fault plane solution, it's a fairly shallow fault with a slope of 34 degrees. But what's weird with the second solution is that it's basically right at zero. Now, with the rake, which is what this is called, if it's zero or 180, that means it's a perfect strike slip event where the faults grind past each other like this. If it's negative, that means you have this extensional event where one plate slips below the other and overall you get expansion. If it's positive, you have a reverse thrust event and you actually get compression overall. So we see that both these numbers for the rake are negative but this one effectively being zero showing that that fault plane solution is for a fairly shallow dipping strike slip event at 247 km down. This fault plane solution shows it being a perfectly vertical fault and it's half extensional and also half strike slip because it's at negative 124. So if it's perfectly negative90, that would be a straight movement down with no oblique component.

[00:07:46]So this is an extensional oblique slip event. And both of these solutions are odd in their own way, but this is the data that we have from these waveforms that have come in. So this 6.2 occurring deep in the mantle, not really a normal earthquake, and it follows up after this magnitude 6 that occurred on the 9th of March. Here we see that and the do you feel it responses and basically you don't see anything right? I think two people there maybe reported it. I don't really even know what the white squares mean. No, they did not feel it. So no one felt the magnitude 6. I was in Rome.

[00:08:24]I didn't feel the magnitude 6. Uh because it was 375 km down. Much deeper.

[00:08:30]247 is still very deep. It's it's an unusual depth in general. You start to get these deeper earthquakes. It's a little unusual. I'll explain the subduction regime in a little bit. So here we see the moment tensor plot for this magnitude 6 that occurred on the 9th of March. And this is a bit of a different earthquake. This instead of it being an extensional event or purely strike slip like the last one, this is a reverse oblique event. So it's a compressional reverse thrust, but it has an oblique component to it. Because we see here our rake is positive meaning that there was this movement up but since it's not exactly at 90 that means that there is some sort of oblique component to it. And we look at our fault dip uh solutions and it shows 54 and 69 degrees. So fairly fairly steep dipping faults but not perfectly vertical. Either way, it was a reverse oblique thrust either in this direction or that direction indicating a compression deep deep underground. This is the magnitude 6 that occurred before at a deeper depth than the magnitude 6.2. So, we're seeing a very obvious trend as it relates to the recent earthquake activity for Italy. We have this magnitude 6 earthquake that struck on the 9th of March. At the time, the strongest in 10 years occurring at a depth of 375 km. very very deep compressing the the deep earth under that location. Right? There's this compressional event to it. And then less than 3 months later, we have this magnitude 6.2 striking at 247 km down.

[00:10:07]So, not only is it bigger, releasing two times more energy approximately than this magnitude 6, it's also shallower and closer to the surface. And this time, there is very likely an extensional component to it. So, we're seeing this up and down motion deep below the crust with Italy with the two strongest quakes I've hit back to back in like a decade. And it's right in the zone of intense volcanism. And really, I see this being related to Marceli volcano here. This back arc spreading center that is influenced by the subduction of the African plate. We could even be seeing, and this is likely the case, we're probably seeing intrlab earthquakes here because this one being closer to that subduction point and then this is being further away, the slab would have subducted even deeper down.

[00:10:57]So, it's likely we're actually seeing interlab earthquakes, this being the African plate, and uh there is, you know, the plate is breaking apart, but also maybe it's compressing at times because it's kind of getting gked up and then it just has this big fault rupture.

[00:11:11]Now, what we sometimes see with subduction is that as these plates go down, they can actually tear apart and then you can get new convection and flow of like hydrothermal fluids and magma and melt and more into those cracks and into those tears and that can drive volcanism. So, we see how we had this older back arc volcano here used to be basically there. Of course, you know, everything's changing a little bit, but this is actively creating plate going like this. It's been pushed out. Now, Marceli volcano is here. And the really interesting thing about Marceli volcano is that its two most active periods of activity perfectly line up with when we've had increased geomagnetic activity. Now, what do I mean by that?

[00:12:01]Well, you go back to about 2 million years ago and we saw this period of rapid spreading from Marceli volcano and that perfectly corresponds with when there was a bunch of back and forth in Earth's magnetic field in the polarity.

[00:12:16]So, it was undergoing these reversals quite rapidly. There was like four or five or six reversals in a pretty short time frame from about 1.78 to 2.14 million years ago, something like that.

[00:12:27]Okay. Then things cooled off for about a million years or so. And then 0.78 million years ago or 780,000 years ago, Marceli volcano started to reacelerate with its spreading rate where it's kind of been ever since. Well, what happened 780,000 years ago? It was the last geomagnetic reversal.

[00:12:48]So it's like a perfect clock in terms of this being resonant for some reason with the magnetic field of the earth as it relates to reversals which are the most significant thing that can happen to earth's magnetic field other than it just completely going away. Now we see these two earthquakes right in this location. Campy Fra is the most active it's been in decades, perhaps even going all the way back to uh like 1500s with the Mont Novo eruption. 2025 was a record year for earthquake activity uplift and gas emissions at Camp Fra.

[00:13:24]There's recently just a magnitude 4.4 earthquake that struck the first one of 2026 and we get these big earthquakes to strike Italy. Thankfully, not widely felt, not destructive, no tsunami risk, but they are backtoback the biggest in a decade and it's this clear trend of uh getting closer to surface and getting stronger. So, I will keep you up to date on everything that's happening as it relates to the situation here. Uh there's a lot of moving pieces. I've been covering camp and all these things for quite some time now. So, please subscribe to stay up to date. And if you want to stay up to date in general with what's happening with the Earth energetically, earthquakes, volcanoes, geomagnetic activity, extreme weather, solar activity, space weather, planetary alignments, interstellar cosmic forces, everything and more. I'm your guy. I'm your host, Stefan Burns. Thank you all so much for watching. Wishing each and every single one of you well. Please take care of yourselves. I'll see you all in the next video.