More than 600 miles separated the epicenter of Friday’s earthquake in Myanmar from the skyscrapers of Bangkok, which lurched and swayed on the skyline of the vast metropolis. A 33-story high-rise under construction even collapsed. How could the shaking in Bangkok, the Thai capital, be connected to an earthquake so far away?

The answer involves low frequency seismic waves, which are capable of traveling vast distances and making high-rise buildings sway.

When a large earthquake strikes, it simultaneously radiates different frequencies of shaking. Some produce a rapid back-and-forth rattling, others low-frequency swaying.

That was true on Friday, when the earthquake in Myanmar produced violent, high-frequency seismic waves; they destroyed low-rise buildings, Buddhist pagodas and other structures near to the quake’s epicenter just outside Mandalay, Myanmar’s second largest city. Many of the destroyed places were made with brick and masonry, brittle materials that are susceptible to that kind of shaking.

When released from an earthquake, high frequency seismic waves spread through the interior of the earth, where they dissipate. Low frequency waves, in contrast, travel along the earth’s crust and for greater distances.

During the 7.9 magnitude Denali earthquake in Alaska in 2002, low frequency waves traveled so far that they caused water in swimming pools and ponds to splash as far away as Texas and Louisiana — harmlessly, but for nearly half an hour, according to NASA.

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