From space, higher than bird's-eye images show that the lozenge-shaped Sea of Marmara, whose eastern shore (south of Istanbul) suffered most from the 1999 earthquakes in Turkey, owes its formation to the slippage of plates of Earth at that site that are constantly in motion.

And in the course of the last 5 million years, the entire sea (and seabed) subsided several hundred meters, and therefore gradually became larger and wider. Scientists learned this by examining satellite images of the area taken over several years and matching them with data from the ground.

Specialists call this a "pull-apart" process because the Earth's crust is literally pulled apart in the section between two strike-slip faults. (A strike-slip occurs when two plates slide past each other like two palms rubbing together.)