Already a curiosity for its sheer size, the 8.6-magnitude earthquake that shook the seafloor west of the Indonesian island of Sumatra on April 11 appears to have been even weirder than scientists thought. A new study reveals the quake zigzagged along four faults, three of which are set perpendicular to each other. From above, the layout looks like a city street grid. We call it an earthquake in a maze, said Lingsen Meng, lead author of the study and a graduate student in seismology at Caltech. We were very excited to see this because an earthquake this large, involving this complicated a fault system, does not happen very often, Meng told OurAmazingPlanet. This may be the only one I will see in my lifetime. [MSNBC]

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