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World's Tallest Building Causing Earthquakes?
IZ Reloaded writes "A geologist thinks that the increase in the number of earthquakes in Taiwan is due to Taipei 101, the world's tallest building. CNN reports: 'Lin said Taipei 101 weighed 700,000 tons and estimated stress from vertical loading on its foundation at 4.7 bars, of which some would be transferred to the earth's upper crust due to extremely soft sedimentary rocks beneath the Taipei basin. If a fault is about to crack, then a little pressure can trigger an earthquake. It's like the last straw that breaks the camel's back.'" More from The Guardian.
Big building causes earthquake, earthquake destroys big building.
Correlation does not imply causation. It's not just a saying: it's the law! :)
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Bit of a misleading headline. Taipei 101 may be the world's tallest building (by some definitions), but it's not the largest. The Pentagon is larger by floor area and several buildings are much larger by volume. Wikipedia has more.
Well, the tower isn't what does it, it is the Earthquake Machine stored in the basement (owned by the United States, of course) that is really behind it.
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I think my statement is only slightly more farfetched.
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
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If you put enough elephants in one place, you can shift the rotation of the planet!
(This looks like a job for Mythbusters!)
The biggest problem now is finding a way to blame this on the United States.
If a fault is about to crack, then a little pressure can trigger an earthquake. It's like the last straw that breaks the camel's back.'" More from The Guardian.
Well then, the straw that breaks the camel's back can be anything from the sky scrpaer, to a simple dog house in someone's backyward. Looks like the author of the article and headline article are just trying to draw an ironic episode. And since it would be impossible to prove exactly what that straw was, its clearly just speculation.
Oh good lord...this whole article is now going to degenerate into a discussion of what is really meant by "tallest" and "largest".
I live in Chicago, and people still try to make the argument that if you count from the sub-sub-sub-sub-basement to the top of the tranmission spikes, then the Sears Tower is still the world's {largest | tallest}.
I guess bragging rights still must count for something.
1) Read story about world's tallest building.
2) Move to Earthquake prone area
3) Put fragile stuff up high
4) File lawsuit
5) ?????
6) Profit!!!!!
...that breaks the camel's back; and thats one hell of a straw!
"The chief enemy of creativity is 'good taste'" -Pablo Picasso
Phew for a moment I thought it was posted under Ask Slashdot ... *wipes sweat*
There has to be a good Godzilla joke in here somewhere...
Why is this on slashdot though?
lol: You see no door there!
> The CN Tower is 553 meters. Taipei 101 is a feeble 509 meters.
Sure, but that's like what, 474 meters US?
List of world's tallest structures. The tallest structure is a TV mast in eastern North Dakota. Taipei 101 is the tallest skyscraper unless you count the masts on top of the Sears Tower, and then that one wins out. See this article for more details.
The Pentagon is the world's largest office building. The largest building by volume is the Boeing plant that manufactures 747's, 767's, and 777's in Washington. The NASA Vehicle Assembly Building is second or third.
But as far as pressure on the bedrock, I would have no problem accepting that Taipei 101 tops the list. It is an extremely big skyscraper on a relatively very small footprint.
Search for "TMD" (tuned mass damper) on this page.
CN tower only a few stories tall, not even a tower really they just put a little round building on a big stick.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
BBC brought the story a day earlier, shorter, no "feet" balast and with a bit more details. In particular they mention that the distance of Tapei 101 to the ancient earthquake fault (inactive for 45,000 years) is 200m, and they also point out that some people doubt that the tower is causing earth quake (not that I want to take sides).
t m
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4493360.s
It doesn't, though. Look at these two posts: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=170122 &cid=14176921. That the Taipei tower can count the little observation deck but the Sears tower can't count the antennas makes no sense.
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
...I told them that building had bad Feng Shui.
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-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Taipei 101 is a building. A skyscraper. A structure in which there are offices and places of business. The CN tower is a tower; a radio mast with an elevator, a stairway, and an observation deck. I won't even get into the arguments about the real height of buildings that have spires compared with those that don't.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
If it was already on one foot, yes.
/.ers seem to be ignoring the fact that there's an "ancient earthquake fault" (from the Guardian article) already there. The tower is just be reopening an old wound.
All comments are properties and trademarks of the voices in my head. Not like I'm gonna claim them.
This is called induced seismicity, and I really would be surprised if a mere 700,000 tons could trigger it. It's a real problem with dams and the enormous weight of water in their reservoirs, and no doubt keeps the project managers of the Three Gorges Dam awake at night (the dam is built on a fault line).
Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that this fact is true: "Taipei 101 is triggering earthquakes".
Some posts immediatly labeled this fact as a negative consequence; citing one line, Often, there are unintended negative consequences to what we do no matter how good the planning is. Actually, this is not the case.
Taipei lies on the western boundary of the Philippine Sea plate; as the plates move, they accumulate energy on the boundary. Lin Cheng-horng wrote that Taipei 101 may be triggering many sismic events of magnitude 2.0 to 3.8. So this micro earthquakes are releasing energy. If Taipei 101 was not there, then this energy would accomulate to a point where a massive earthquake would occur. The more energy is released in small sismic events, the less will appear in a large earthquake (capable of destroying houses and killing people).
So, the aforementioned fact is a positive consequence.
Behind my monitor, on my office wall, is the Edificios del Mundo poster of the tallest buildings in the world, with heights to roof, antenna & spire where appropriate.
Tapei 101: Spire: 508m, Roof: 448m
Sears Tower: Roof: 442m, Antenna: 527m
All well and good, until you consider:
Ostankino Tower, Moscow: Antenna: 540m
CN Tower: Antenna: 553m
More useful diagrams and comparisons here.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
If it turns out to be true they may regret naming it like it was designed by first year engineering students "101"
!sig
The article states that the micro quakes have been on the rise since the they started constructing the building.
Now I dunno about you, but I seriously doubt that the tower weighed 700,000 tons from the moment they poured the concrete foundations, which more than likely means the micro quakes simply coincided with the beginning of construction, independant of any outside human activity.
If the quakes increased in number as the building progressed, then it could be possible.
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And someone is looking for ideas to blame this on the USA. The 1985 James Bond flick A View to a Kill came up with this idea of pumping water from a lake into a fault (with a Nuke - obsession of most Bond villains with Nukes) elsewhere close to the San Diego fault to destroy Silicon Valley. There is a little scientific salt in this idea, pumping fluid (although not in small quantities) into an existing fault could initiate seismic activity. Now someone says a single sky scraper can do this with just 700,000 tonnes. Other than becoming an idea for some B-grade movie, I don't see any useful implication here. The global weather cycle is interesting, El Nino seems to be delivering lesser heat this year and there's lots more interesting changes happening. Indonesia for all the quakes has about 76 active volcanoes, the highest for a single nation. So no one was correlating recent seismic and volcanic activity with the point that Indonesia was on its way to attempt to construct the world's tallest building. Now some Taiwanese scientists have the luxury to think about tall buildings and link them to possible impending earthquakes. This is a wake up call for the real scientists, before these people start naming it the "Tower of Babel" effect. Scientific news in the media and magazines are really lacking. Popular Science reports in media is almost always a publicity stunt.
No Greater Friend, No Greater Enemy! (Lucius Cornelius Sulla)
What, less than 5 bars in a multistory building? Where does one go for a quite ale or two without all the crowds?
An entire downtown core could exert enough pressure to impact something. Pressure at any one point must be spread out and dampened. Rather than finger a single buildign they should look at the building density in the area.
p.s. i have no geology training.
- Density of really light rock: ~ 1.2 tons/cubic meter
- Assume "supporting area" around the building: 1000 meters square
- Assume "supporting depth" of tectonic plate: 10km meters deep
- Volume of: 10^10 cubic meters
- Weight of that area around the building: 1.2 x 10^10 tons
- Building, fraction thereof: 0.00055
As a real rough calculation, the weight of the building is negligible....earthquake causes building.
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Your examples merely demonstrate that nature* can have a large impact on us whatever we do. But you're assuming the converse is true--that therefore we cannot have any impact on nature no matter what we do. That does not logically follow. Nature is incredibly diverse; there is little to no connection between hurricanes in the Gulf Coast and earthquakes in Thailand. You might as well be saying "I can't break this boulder with my hammer, therefore we'll never cause a species to go extinct."
More specifically, if you believe human activity cannot affect seismic activity, I encourage you to read up on the Rocky Mountain Arsenal fluid injection study. In fact, here's a good overview of the various ways in which humans affect seismic activity.
*And don't get be started on this word, which is fraught with interpretative baggage. Remember that scientifically we are part of nature too, so it's not a question of "humanity" affecting "nature," but rather one aspect of nature affecting another.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Okay, this is off-topic, but the topic is pretty stupid anyhow, so...
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I must say, I find the standards for "tallest building" to be completely arbitrary, to say the least. I think moronic would be more appropriate.
I consider the Sears Tower to be the tallest by every rational measure. The Petronas Towers were considered taller only because the, err, "spire", simply met the standard for being part of the "structure", rather than being an antenna.
The Taipei 101 is taller than the Sears Tower because it has a tiny little observation-type deck up on it's spire. It's slightly higher than the highest floor of the Sears Tower, although not really a floor. That is in addition to the previous spire/antenna issue.
In addition, the Sears Tower has 110 floors, while the Taipei 101 only has 101 (hence the name). And no, the floors aren't any smaller...
Wikipedia has a very good illustration of their relative heights. After seeing it, I think most everyone will agree that the Sears Tower is taller in every rational measurement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Skyscrapercomp
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When we were tunneling for the 3rd water tunnel, the rock was hitting 16,000psi - 20,000psi, if I remember correct. That's so hard that it's unbelievable.
Many people believed that the sold rock substrata was largely responsible for the legendary acoustics of the original Carnegie Hall [widely believed to have produced the most beautiful sound of any concert hall ever built].
Sadly, though, there is widespread agreement among old-timers that the acoustics were permanently ruined by the 1986 "renovation". [Or at least there was widespread agreement amongst old-timers back in 1986; now, almost 20 years later, there are precious few NYers who possess a living memory of e.g. Toscanini conducting in the old, pre-renovation hall].
good post, overall (i agree w/ it). just a small metaphor nit: coastlines are by definition already level (they are where the "altitude above sea-level" is zero). of course, you meant the human artifacts built upon those coasts, i understand...