Global Insight: Real-Time Video Captures Earth’s Surface Motion During Earthquakes

A quiet Friday afternoon in central Myanmar was shattered on March 28, 2025, when a massive magnitude 7.7 earthquake tore through the region. The rupture followed the notorious Sagaing Fault, a strike-slip boundary known for splitting the land horizontally. While the disaster caused widespread destruction and loss of life, it also gave scientists something they’ve never had before: a direct, real-time visual record of fault slip during an earthquake.

Thanks to a closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera mounted on a driveway, researchers captured the exact moment the land cracked open and surged past itself. That footage, only 26 seconds long, revealed something never directly seen—how the Earth’s surface moves during a seismic event.

Using this rare video, scientists at Kyoto University, led by geologist Jesse Kearse, analyzed the quake’s motion frame by frame. Their study, published in The Seismic Record, provides groundbreaking insight into the way earthquake ruptures behave at the surface.

The footage shows what looks like the Earth being unzipped. During the quake, the ground on either side of a fault shifts suddenly and violently, sliding past in opposite directions. Scientists used a technique called pixel cross-correlation to analyze the video. This method tracks how points in one frame move relative to the next, revealing detailed motion patterns during the event.

The results were dramatic. The land slipped sideways by 2.5 meters in just 1.3 seconds, reaching a top speed of 3.2 meters per second. That kind of speed and precision had only been guessed at before using indirect tools like seismic sensors. But this time, the rupture wasn’t just measured—it was seen.

Kearse explained the discovery in clear terms: “The brief duration of motion confirms a pulse-like rupture, characterized by a concentrated burst of slip propagating along the fault, much like a ripple traveling down a rug when flicked from one end.”

That ripple, like a shock wave, tore through the Earth with violent force. At some points along the fault, the ground slipped by as much as 6 meters. But the major breakthrough wasn’t just how fast or far the ground moved—it was how it moved.

The movement seen in the video wasn’t straight. It followed a subtle curve, bending slightly during the rupture. For years, geologists have found clues of such curving motion in what are known as “slickenlines”—fine striations on the surfaces of faults formed by earthquake shear. These lines often appear curved, but until now, no one had ever seen that curved motion happen live.

That changed with the 2025 Myanmar quake.

“The CCTV record shows a curved slip path, which matches past geological observations from faults around the world,” Kearse said. “We did not anticipate that this video record would provide such a rich variety of detailed observations. Such kinematic data is critical for advancing our understanding of earthquake source physics.”

Curved slips are important because they suggest something deeper about how the Earth breaks. According to the researchers, curved motion might happen because stress along a fault line isn’t even. The underground pressure could be stronger or weaker at certain depths, pushing the rupture off a straight path as it bursts through the crust.

Before this study, researchers had relied on two main methods to learn how faults moved during earthquakes. One involved slickenlines found on exposed fault planes after a quake. These marks tell part of the story, but they’re often complex and incomplete. They form after the fact and may be affected by non-seismic processes like landslides or soil settling.

The second method used near-fault seismic instruments, like high-speed GPS or strong-motion seismometers. These tools record the shaking that comes with a quake, but because they’re often located on just one side of the fault, they only show part of the slip. Also, seismic waves recorded off the fault may be distorted by surface effects, making it hard to pin down the real motion between fault blocks.

The Myanmar video footage bridges this gap. For the first time, researchers saw both sides of the rupture, watching how the ground on each side moved in real time. That kind of direct evidence connects the dots between geological observations, theoretical models, and instrumental recordings.

The team’s results also support dynamic rupture models that link the direction of fault propagation to curved motion near the surface. These models have suggested for years that the rupture front can bend depending on the speed and stress conditions underground. Now, there’s real footage backing that up.

This discovery may mark the beginning of a new era in earthquake science. With more surveillance systems now covering urban and remote areas, similar footage could soon become a regular part of seismic analysis. As more videos like this are collected, researchers could start to build better models for predicting how and where the Earth will rupture.

Understanding the details of ground motion also helps engineers design safer buildings and infrastructure. If pulse-like ruptures and curved slips are more common than once believed, then structures near faults may need to be re-evaluated with those movements in mind.

The next step for Kearse and his team is to run advanced simulations using the data from the Myanmar quake. By feeding the motion patterns into computer models, they hope to figure out what controls the rupture’s path, speed, and shape.

This quake, one of the strongest to strike Myanmar in more than a century, caused severe damage and loss of life. Yet from that tragedy emerged a tool that could help prevent future disasters. The researchers showed that even a simple driveway security camera can become a powerful scientific instrument when paired with the right technology.

“Better understanding curving, slipping faults and the traces they leave behind can improve seismologists’ understanding of past earthquake trajectories—and, hopefully, predict future ones,” Kearse said.

In a field where milliseconds matter and data is often incomplete, that kind of direct evidence may be the clearest window yet into the hidden physics of the Earth’s shifting crust.