NASA map shows how California earthquakes moved the earth: NPR

Curious to see how much soil moved after the two major earthquakes in Southern California last week? NASA just has the map for this question – and it happens to be like a beautiful psychedelic art.

On July 4, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake hit the city of Ridgecrest, north of Los Angeles. The following evening, the region was again shaken by a magnitude 7.1 earthquake. Fortunately, there were no serious injuries or major damage to the infrastructure.

The map was created by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis Team. It shows undulating rainbows forming a circular pattern around the faults of the two earthquakes.

Each rainbow means that the soil has been moved about 4.8 inches. This is the same logic as a topographic map, where the nearest lines indicate steeper slopes. In this case, the closer the rainbow stripes are to each other, the more the ground has been moved by the shaker.

Eric Fielding, a JPL geophysicist, explains that the parts of the map along the fault where the colors appear confused suggest an even more dramatic movement of the ground.

He explains how they mapped the changes.

"We took a radar image before the earthquake and another after the earthquake," Fielding told NPR. They then compare the change of each point between the two images. "This allows us to measure the amounts that the ground has moved either to or away from the satellite."

The scientists used radar data from the Japanese satellite ALOS-2. Fielding says the radar can detect a movement as small as half an inch.

Here is another map produced by NASA that shows the same information in a different way:

In this one, the color difference makes it easier to see that the surface of the Earth has moved in different directions along the fault. "We can clearly see the two sides of the fault moved in opposite directions," he said.

The long line of green circles on the map from north-west to south-east is the rift that broke during the largest earthquake on July 5th. According to Fields, the fault break is about 30 miles long. The line of green circles that cuts this fault almost at right angles is the break of the smallest earthquake of July 4th.

"6.4 has committed a fault almost perpendicular to 7.1," he said.

The blue zone located west of the largest fault has shifted up to 2.7 feet northwest during the largest earthquake, while the red zone is more likely to occur. is moved up to 2 feet to the southeast, according to NASA.