Slashdot Mirror

A 7.0 earthquake

A 7.2 earthquake

occured at 7:50PM PST

occured at 6:50PM PST (7:50PM PDT)

source (same as in TFS)

I'm from the same area. Here are some pics. Check out the last one, of santa rosa island. The hurricane cut the island in two.

The earthquake was very small here in Eureka (1.5 hours south of Crescent City, 2 hours south of Oregon), to the point where some people didn't even feel it. It made my big metal shelves sqeak a little and I could feel a little shaking (it felt more like a slight swinging), but that's it. There was a tsunami warning, but it was short lived and no wave came. Go back to your lives; nothing even remotely important happened. I'm very surprised to see this show up on Slashdot.

The earthquake was very small here in Eureka (1.5 hours south of Crescent City, 2 hours south of Oregon), to the point where some people didn't even feel it. It made my big metal shelves sqeak a little and I could feel a little shaking (it felt more like a slight swinging), but that's it. There was a tsunami warning, but it was short lived and no wave came. Go back to your lives; nothing even remotely important happened. I'm very surprised to see this show up on Slashdot.

This is just a small nit-pick with this assertion. Sorry for dragging it out as I have.

http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/research/parkfield/

Historical data showed earthquakes occurring in 1857, 1881, 1901, 1922, 1934, and 1966. The pattern average showed an earthquake due by around 1993. The next significant earthquake did not happen until 2004, not exactly on time, but dead accurate compared to your time span of 'millions of years'.

Regarding the advice from your friends; a scientist once told me 'Half of everything that scientists teach is wrong, and we don't know which half it is.' Much of current scientific theory is just that, someone's current theory. Take it with a grain of salt.

until an 8th magnitude quake suddenly releases ten times as much energy,

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsww/glossary.ht m#magnitude

This is just a small nit-pick with this assertion. Sorry for dragging it out as I have.

http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/research/parkfield/

Historical data showed earthquakes occurring in 1857, 1881, 1901, 1922, 1934, and 1966. The pattern average showed an earthquake due by around 1993. The next significant earthquake did not happen until 2004, not exactly on time, but dead accurate compared to your time span of 'millions of years'.

Regarding the advice from your friends; a scientist once told me 'Half of everything that scientists teach is wrong, and we don't know which half it is.' Much of current scientific theory is just that, someone's current theory. Take it with a grain of salt.

until an 8th magnitude quake suddenly releases ten times as much energy,

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsww/glossary.ht m#magnitude

link to earthquake info

From the tensor that does look like a strike slip fault to me, so you are to some degree right.

But this thing would still release enough energy to trigger a major underwater mud-slide and that way releasing the energy for a major tsunami if the slide occurs in the wrong position.
From classes (I study geophysics) I seem to remember there being some pretty steep slopes where these mud-slides could occur.

link to earthquake info

From the tensor that does look like a strike slip fault to me, so you are to some degree right.

But this thing would still release enough energy to trigger a major underwater mud-slide and that way releasing the energy for a major tsunami if the slide occurs in the wrong position.
From classes (I study geophysics) I seem to remember there being some pretty steep slopes where these mud-slides could occur.

Something I noticed after the 5.2 quake in southern California, is that there was a tremendous number of temblors immediately following, but they were all focused around the site of the original quake. I had to wonder how much stress was building up along the fault line, to the north and south.

As I type this, I see >800 quakes on the California/Nevada quake map, and I wonder how much more stress is building up around Silicon Valley. (Yes, I live and work in the Valley.)

I suspect that big slips north and south increase the odds of a slip in between. Are there any geologists out there who can verify this?

From this USGS map, the centre of the earthquake is closest to a subduction zone, not a slip fault, so theoretically the displacement of landmass could have caused a tsunami, had the magnitude been sufficient.

However, the shaking back and forth itself can cause tsunamis... or would they call that a tidal wave?

Tidal wave is the common (and incorrect) way of referring to a Tsunami. It's misleading, though, as the wave produced is not a product of tides at all and must be - by definition- the product of tectonic activity.

Courtesy of the US Geological Survey right here. Plenty of info that I don't understand, plus pretty maps!

In this case the same thing is happening. You'll note in the list that there have already been a number of aftershocks over the past few hours.

They also have a RSS feed, so presumably you could create your own tsunami warning system.

In this case the same thing is happening. You'll note in the list that there have already been a number of aftershocks over the past few hours.

They also have a RSS feed, so presumably you could create your own tsunami warning system.

Did you read how the map works? It bases itself on what happened recently to predict the near future. It's not a crystal ball telling you where "not" to be tomorrow.

Follow the How do we do this map? link and you'll get to an explanation of how the map is made. Or you can go directly here: http://eqint.cr.usgs.gov/eq/html/eqprob.html

Here in San Francisco there's a 50% chance of a 5.0 quake in the next five years, but it doesn't mean it will happen or not. It's statistics based on previous events.

quakes: http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/

you can see this big one off to the upper left, but 'quakes are no big thing around these parts - just look, we get ~hundreds a day; similar to /. geting 2-300 500 server errors a day.

http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/step/

If you look now though, there are two areas of fairly high risk.

Don't use this map for anything important, like planning picnics.

Still, I check this every day, and I am suprised that I was given a reference to test its accuracy so soon.

Still, it has updated today in light of the events.

FYI - Snipe are good eating. If someone takes you snipe hunting without a gun, I would be suspicious.

or maybe you come from a country that spells it right.
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/a luminum/
or
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Diction ary&va=aluminum

Earthshots http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/earthshots/slow/tableofc ontents from the U.S. Geological Survey shows satellite before/after images showing environmental change around the world. The site started back in the 90s, they've been adding more information since. Pretty neat stuff

And yes, most empires come to an end. So will Microsoft. But if it goes with a bang or a whimper, I cannot say. There are about 40 billion reasons in favour of the long, drawn-out whimper theory, though. Then again the Cascadias might intervene.

If you're going to nitpick, you should add "according to current theory"!

After 3 billion years?

We better work fast. The islands on which they plan to base these deep-ocean temperature mining operations will mostly submerge beneath the rising seas caused by our last wave of "unlimited energy", petrofuels. Their energy needs will be resolved forever, but that won't help the rest of us any.

It seems like neither Google nor MS is really innovating much on this; granted the scrolling ability is cool with Google, but web-based GIS systems have been around for a long time, such as ESRI's ArcIMS, Autodesk's MapGuide and myriad others that support Web Mapping Services (WMS)

If I wanted to, I can download ortho photos of the entire United States from the USGS or from the USDA's NAIP program.

I guess is seems that these days it's actually pretty easy to build and manipulate web based GIS systems, so I'm curious to see what the next Big Thing will be. Maybe better integration with mobile devices?

The primary use of this map is educational. Watching the fluctuations in the probabilities will help you understand the nature of earthquake clustering and how the patterns change with time

I think the story needs a new focusm or it is going to be misunderstood by the public

a volcanologist will say the yellowstone caldera will do us all in...

Yeap, watch out for those Supervolcanos, Supervolcanoes could trigger global freeze especially Yellowstone

I do believe our own moon is named Luna...

Actually, our moon doesn't technically seem to be named anything. The International Astronomical Union (IAU), which many people consider to be the authority on such matters, doesn't seem to have any documents that specify what our moon's name is. Some of their documents use the name Moon with a capital M (eg. "Report of the IAU/IAG Working Group on Cartographic Cordinates and Rotational Elements of the Planets and Satellites: 2000" http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/Projects/ISPRS/PREPRI NTS/index_preprints.html), and I've read that they recommend the use of the name Moon.

From your own link
http://www.aerospaceguide.net/dynasoar.html/

The USAF and NACA (now NASA) merged hypersonic aircraft studies into one research program.

So the blatant separation you pruport arent really all that clear, are they?

What on Earth? They merged a research program to work together! How the hell does that imply that two separate agencies suddenly became one agency?

NASA works with other agencies all the time. In this project, they are working with the NOAA and the USGS. That doesn't mean that the USGS is our space agency.

I don't know how this qualifies as a first though, the original spy satellites from the 50's were stereoscopic.

Agreed, it only qualifies as a first if you count the resolution and have a strict definition of "satellite". SRTM data has been available for some time. There seem to be many people who are ignorant about the data resources (many free) we already have and are willing to claim an improvement as a "first".

Uh, can't they already determine heights to high degree of accuracy with GPS or other radio wave methods?

Yes.

How would a picture be more accurate?

Well, among the most accurate topographical maps available are from the Shuttle Radar Topography mission, which gave us the entire earth at roughly 30-m resolution, with a height precision of about 16 meters.

India's new satellite has 2.5-meter resolution, and its vertical accuracy after proper stereoscopic matching would be of the same order of magnitude so clearly in this case, it is more accurate.

Plus, the SRTM mission is over. It doesn't help if you're trying to measure a new building, for example.

You could probably get more accurate with a specialized radar or lidar instrument, but those give you point measurements, not images. And passive imaging requires far less power. So, there are lots of advantages to stereo images.

What ever happened to all the data we were going to get from the Shuttle Endeavor's mapping mission? What has been done with it?

I found some info here: Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Home page

http://srtm.usgs.gov/

I run some mailing lists for earthquake information. We have something like 70,000 subscribers worldwide, and I regularly get complaints from people who have had their mail filtered by their ISP as suspected spam. So this is not an isolated problem.

More SEA MONKEYS!
http://ut.water.usgs.gov/shrimp/ "The life cycle of Artemia begins from a dormant cyst that contains an embryo in a suspended state of metabolism (known as diapause). The cysts are very hardy and may remain viable for many years if kept dry."

Unlikely. The Mohorovicic (Moho) discontinuity can be described in a few different ways - either where seismic veolocities have a marked discontinuity, or where a noticable chemical/mineralogical change occurs (can't remember what it is, I'm a geophysicist, not a geologist). What it's not is a boundary between a nice solid crust floating on top of "firey liquid mantle". In fact more accurate terms are lithosphere and asthenosphere, rather than crust and mantle, which basically differentiate between rigid, colder material, and warmer, more ductile rock. The top of the mantle is still solid, but becomes increasingly ductile with depth. Various minerals reach melting point as you go down towards the Core-Mantle Boundary, but basically I think you have to get to the outer core before it's all liquid (mostly iron). In terms of energies, the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated was about 55-60 megatonnes (depending on who you ask), in 1961 by the USSR. The energy released by the great 1960 Chilean earthquake (the largest recorded in the last 100 years) was equivalent approximately to a 2000 Mt bomb. So, setting off a nuke at the moho might temporarily create a small spherical cavity which would probably collapse in on itself, and maybe create some melt, but it's doubtful it would come gushing to the surface as a raging plume of "liquid hot magma". Besides, there have been plenty of underground nuclear tests, and none of those have resulted in a humungous volcano. As yet. The USGS site at http://www.usgs.gov/ is probably a good place to find out more.

Oh, concerning YellowStone, Native Americans in the Arizona area experienced several inches of Volcanic ash in early AD. This dramatically increased the fertility of the soil - and their crops once they discovered that leaving the ash layer in place and planting seed underneath was the best practice. The ash layer kept the ground warm and compensated for the cooling from the "nuclear" winter - sort of a super mulch. It might be worth making some contingincy plans for a YellowStone eruption, including compiling the experiences of survivors of similar events in the past.

Sun knows what businesses, universities and governments want, and it isn't all rosy happy days at the park like so many Slashdotters want to make it out to be.

I'm not sure what the last portion of that statement implies, but let's move on....

The CDDL, for example, is a bulls-eye hit catering to these markets,

How so?

I work for a government laboratory. Make your case for the CDDL being 'better' than GPL.

Do you really think governments developing an identity for themsevles really care about sharing and caring?

Have you ever heard of CRADA?

God, Slashdot just might be the core and source of all naivete in the world.

And yet, here you are posting on Slashdot!

Nice rant. Perhaps you could flesh out a positive position for your arguments. I couldn't find one.

If carbon dating us unreliable past a few thousand years, as you say, what's a more reliable dating method past that timeframe?

There are several, depending on the half-life of isotopes that may be present. You can find a very good explanation of radiometric dating methods here. Some responses to some of the creationist's arguments against the validity of these approaches can be found here.

Brilliant comment! Practically every activity on this planet is solar powered, but not in the way that tunnel-vision technologists think.

1) Right, not every activity. geothermal sea vents host life that is not currently reliant on the sun for their energy - they use hydrogen sulfide-oxidizing bacteria to release the chemical energy of the Earth. USGS reference

2) yeah, even the tunnel-vision technologists know where all our energy is coming from. They know a surprising amount about the topic because it's their chosen field of research. I'd probably even wager they know more about it than the average armchair scientist. (I am not a solar energy scientist, thus placing me in the armchair scientist role on that topic as well) Perhaps when smart people choose to devote part of their life to pursuing study of some topic, we might do well to try and see why they think it's important rather than spend our time insulting them.

Well, the amount of solar energy hitting us is around 1.5 kilowatts per square meter at our distance, that would be when the sun is directly overhead (and through the atmosphere). That drops off as a cos of the angle away from the point facing the sun. So if the sun passed directly overhead at noon, at 9:00 am and 3:00 pm (45 degrees away) we would be getting about 70.71% of the energy, or about 1 kilowatt. At 30 degrees lattitude, we would still be getting 75% of the maximum energy as early as 10:00 am and as late as 2:00 pm. So let's say we have 35% cloud cover (some areas could be much more sunny), that should account about for the rest of the hours in the day if we ignore them, but let us go ahead and take an hour off our peak time. So we'd have just three hours of sunlight at 80% (on average lets say) of 1.5 kilowatts, or 3.6 kilowatt hours per square meter per day. let's assume a solar cell that is 20% efficient, so we only get 0.72 kilowatt-hours per square meter per day.

Statistics show that hte US used 94.27 quadrillion BTUs of energy from all sources in 1998. From the conversion factors, that comes out to 27 trillion kilowatt hours. Divide by 365 and that's 74 billion kilowatt hours per day that we need. So we end up needing 103 billion square meters at 30 degrees lattitude to power the entire U.S. That's an area 320.5 kilometers to a side, about 1/7th the size of Texas.

And that's using conservative estimates. Plug in 30% efficency for solar cells, take into account the whole day and not just three hours like I did, and that area will shrink considerably.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqinthenews/2005/usweax /

Magnitude 8.2 - NORTHERN SUMATRA, INDONESIA
2005 March 28 16:09:37 UTC
Preliminary Earthquake Report
U.S. Geological Survey, National Earthquake Information Center
World Data Center for Seismology, Denver

A great earthquake occurred at 16:09:37 (UTC) on Monday, March 28, 2005. The magnitude 8.2 event has been located in NORTHERN SUMATRA, INDONESIA. (This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.)

put on the TV, its happening again

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsww/Quakes/uswe ax.htm

wish them luck, they have about 20minutes

You say you nead salt water?

Here's a shot of the "whaleback" with one "scar" that raised some dust on 2/22, and further disintegration on 2/25. The "whaleback" is gradually coming apart.

Here's a shot of the "whaleback" with one "scar" that raised some dust on 2/22, and further disintegration on 2/25. The "whaleback" is gradually coming apart.

See for instance the before and after shots here.

Lesson of the day: Just because you have several sources, doesn't mean they're any good.
(In this case both are named 'Armageddon online', which is obviously implies a trustworthy, balanced and accurate depiction of the geology involved.)

I suggest peeking at this instead. It's a rather large report from the US Geological Survey.

It says (under "The future of Yellowstone volcanism"):
About 700,000 years intervened between the climactic episodes of the first two volcanic cycles and about 650,000 years between the second two

So perhaps 'calendar like' on a geological timescale, certainly not on a human one.

To summarize what the report says: Does this really constitute periodicity? They don't know. (4 events isn't much to go on, now is it?)
Does this mean there's a real risk? They don't know.

Personally, though, I think there's a lot more in the world to worry about than the fact that if the thing is periodic, it might erupt again, possibly within the next tens of thousands of years.

or even

http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/MSH/Eruption04 /Monitoring/plume_in_the_evening_8march05.html

slashnik

http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/MSH/Eruption04 /Monitoring/plume_in_the_evening_8march05.html

This has some pretty good photos, as well as a picture with (MS Paint?) editing describing what's what.

The photos are taken from a remote camera on the mountain that takes a picture every 2.5 minutes. This is as good as it gets.

Link is better.
Thanks.

My favorite is this one Take Cover!!

Mount St. Helens, Washington Crater, Dome, and Eruption Images>