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.

Comments

Nature will work it out

[Anonymous Coward]

Big building causes earthquake, earthquake destroys big building.

Re:Nature will work it out

[big tex]

One of the unique features of manhattan (actually, most of NYC, esp. the Bronx) is lots of bedrock, real close. 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.

You don't drive piles in manhattan, shit just bottoms out on rock so fast it hurts. Spread footings, caissons with rock sockets, that's what you use.

the end result is that the load is distributed so far it doesn't matter.

Re:Nature will work it out

[Anonymous Coward]

Anytime we think that we can fly, we're proven wrong. We spend billions of dollars studying wax-and-feather wings, but one small leap off of a barn roof is all it takes to break a neck. Gravity has torn apart entire families.

The notion that a rocket can actually make it to the moon is totally preposterous. This sounds more like someone trying to justify a grant or raise money than any serious science.

Re:Nature will work it out

[CODiNE]

We can't have a big impact on nature? Okay since you mentioned the New Orleans levees, here you go.
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/featu re5/
By screwing with nature we caused all that damage during Katrina, that article was written a year ago. It had been known for decades that we'd been screwing up the whole region and eventually it was gonna come back and get us. Naaah... we can't really have much of an impact... Whoah! Hey where'd the Aral Sea go?
http://unimaps.com/aral-sea/index.html

Mods, why is this guy a 5? Induced Seismicity is explained several times in other posts... are you too busy trying to protect your "We can't hurt the earth" biases?

All together now...

[daeley]

Correlation does not imply causation. It's not just a saying: it's the law! :)

Re:All together now...

[CosmeticLobotamy]

Correlation does not imply causation.

But it almost always warrants looking into.

Re:All together now...

[Galvatron]

What, are you saying that the construction of the Taipei 101 and an increase in earthquake activity are both caused by a third, unknown factor?

Re:All together now...

[Council]

Kind sirs,
Please in your good graces mod parent funny.
Kindest regards,
some random dude who talks like a wanker.

Perhaps the factor in question is the global decrease in number of pirates?

Re:All together now...

[JPriest]

But it almost always warrants looking into.

Someone gets it! I have been saying this for a long time as I have been trying to get a research grant to investigate the relationship between a decrease in the number of pirates and an increase in average global temperatures (see graph).

Re:All together now...

[ObiWanKenblowme]

You're right - this link shows there were over 17 active pirates in 2005 alone, and that's not including other piracy-related groups such as buccaneers or raiders.

Tallest != Largest

[RedWizzard]

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.

Re:Tallest != Largest

[Stevyn]

Whats more interesting is the Boeing Everett plant mentioned in that link has its own weather. I saw a special on it on the history channel and it said how it can rain inside the building. This along with the building mentioned in the article shows how humans can not assume their pride or ambition can overcome the forces of nature. You can construct a strong building, but if the foundation is made of quicksand over a fault line, it just might sink.

Re:Tallest != Largest

[Marillion]

But, it is built with concrete with very little land area.

Think of how a 50kg woman in stilletto heels leaves dents in wood floors where a 90kg man in sneakers doesn't.

Re:Tallest != Largest

[cjanota]

Height has everything to do with potential energy, at least from the gravity point of view. PE=mgh But having more potential energy has nothing to do with the pressure on the ground. It is a static situation. Potential energy would only come into play if the building were to fall down.

Re:Tallest != Largest

[Woldry]

I can beat that. I've been a 90kg man in stiletto heels.

Conspiracy theory

[mister_llah]

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.

===

I think my statement is only slightly more farfetched.

So it's true then...

[the_skywise]

If you put enough elephants in one place, you can shift the rotation of the planet!

(This looks like a job for Mythbusters!)

Re:So it's true then...

[Council]

If you put enough elephants in one place, you can shift the rotation of the planet!

(This looks like a job for Mythbusters!)

I once calculated that if you spin around in an office chair, you rob the day of about 10^-35 seconds.

Of course, that's if you spin counterclockwise. Clockwise slows the earth down and lengthens the day.

If you wanna be precise, multiply by the sine of your latitude -- on the equator, it has no effect.

Of course, if you want to be precise, do the calculation yourself. I worked it out a long time ago while sitting in a spinning chair at a long overnight security guard shift. It might've been 1/10^35th of a DAY, or something. It's probably right to within a factor of ten million (10^7) and depends on how fat you are and how you hold your arms and legs.

Re:So it's true then...

[Quiet_Desperation]

If you put enough elephants in one place, you can shift the rotation of the planet!

Or at least the giant turtle they are standing on.

Biggest problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem now is finding a way to blame this on the United States.

Re:Biggest problem

[isd_glory]

1. We (America) built many of the original "tallest" skyscrapers.
2. In order for the rest of the world to remain architecturally competitive, they were forced to build taller and taller buildings.
3. After a certain point, those tall buildings may eventually cause earthquake resulting in economic damage for that country.

A rather dastardly plan, eh? ;)

Lawsuit

[ZachPruckowski]

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!!!!!

Ask Slashdot

[karvind]

Phew for a moment I thought it was posted under Ask Slashdot ... *wipes sweat*

Re:CN tower

[Chairboy]

> The CN Tower is 553 meters. Taipei 101 is a feeble 509 meters.
Sure, but that's like what, 474 meters US?

Re:it may be tall but its not the "largest"

[ari_j]

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.

Taipei 101 is "earthquake proof"

[alienmole]

Search for "TMD" (tuned mass damper) on this page.

BBC article

[msbsod]

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).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4493360.st m

They Should Have Listened to Me...

[Guncrazy]

...I told them that building had bad Feng Shui.

Breaking news - butterfly wings flapping cause

[wadiwood]

Breaking News

Flapping butterfly wings cause Hurricane.

http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~ldb/seminar/butterfly.html

Bush launches mass pesticide attack, in retalliation for Hurricane Katrina.

Re: Condemning History

[some guy I know]

What is the quote about not knowing history and being doomed to repeat it?

Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana

Induced Seismicity

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

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).

Re:Induced Seismicity

[cluckshot]

Inducing earthquakes is a long known process. It was sufficiently known by the 1930's that the US TVA anticipated it during the construction and operation of its large dams and lakes. These have since happened pretty much as expected. The US War Department (Yes -- War Department - before WW2) had built Wilson Dam at Florence, Alabama and finished it in 1926. The dam has kicked off up to 4.0 quakes and frequent in the 3.0 to 3.5 range since it was completed. It occurs every few years. The US TVA Guntersville Dam and lake causes quakes in the order of 2.5 to 3.5 with some frequency.

As another poster noted the 3-Gorges dam in China is anticipated to cause quakes. The size here is expected to cause quakes in the order of 7 to 8 on the Richter Scale. It has already caused numerous quakes in the order of 5.5 or so. There have been quakes upwards of that as well.

Hydro pool events are often discounted by some parties because rivers are always found adjacent to faults. This is because rivers tend to flow in the crack of a fault. The problem here is that the faults don't produce the large quakes until the lakes are added. The process clearly increases the quake intensity and frequency in the area.

The masses of water and hydrocarbon recovered from Coal Gas fields in Alabama have shown frequent quakes in the order of 2.0 to 3.5 happening in a zone which didn't have any quake frequency before. In South Alabama in the massive Natural Gas extraction efforts there the extraction of brines and natural gas have resulted in frequent quakes where the USGS says they expect few if any ever to occur. These have been in the range from 4.9 down to 2.5. The largest quake in Alabama history happened during Natural Gas well proving at the Little Rock Gas Field in Escambia County near Atmore. It was a 4.9. The Power River Coal Gas development will have quakes frequently up to 5 or 6 on the scale from this. Add these to the natural risk in the area and serious problems are expected.

One cannot say for sure what affect or effect happened at Ache in Sumatra in the quake/tsunami there but massive Natural Gas proving (Well blowing) operations were under way at the time that produced natural gas flares with fire upwards of 600 square miles in size at the time. Similar operations were under way in the region of Alaska at the time of the 1964 quake there.

It is absolutely sure that mankind can at least trigger a latient earthquake with large structures and large mining operations. It may be that such events are even partially caused by such activity.

To be fair, a large building might cause a quake as the earth adjusts to the new stress levels. It is a process that in time will settle down as there is no real dynamic change in the building's mass except the commuters. This is unlike hydro pools which change dynamically or like oil/gas operations which cause massive dynamic changes in the earth. Oil/Gas operations cause such massive dynamic changes in areas that they actually are larger than even the 3 Gorges Dam in mass changes in some areas. The withdrawal of 200 to 300 times in brine of the hydrocarbon extraction causes these operations to be the largest mass changes man is causing on the earth. Pressure changes in these formations represent some of the largest forces on the planet. Latient pressures in field like Petronius near Alabama reach up to 50,000 psi.

when a bad thing is actually a good thing

[mennucc1]

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.

Tallest?

[evilviper]

Okay, this is off-topic, but the topic is pretty stupid anyhow, so...

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:Skyscrapercompa re1.PNG