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The Largest Recorded Tsunami Was 50 Years Ago
An anonymous reader writes "July marks the 50th anniversary of the world's largest tsunami — a 1,720-foot-tall wave in Lituya Bay, Alaska. It was triggered by a chain reaction of events that began with a magnitude 7.7 earthquake on the Fairweather Fault, which dislodged a rock fall of 40 million cubic yards, that fell 3,000 feet and splashed into the northwest end of Lituya Bay to generate the wave. This article includes survivor accounts, maps, a satellite image, and photos taken right after the event." To be fair, eyewitness accounts put the height of the wave as it came toward their boats at perhaps 100 feet. The tsunami scoured the land of vegetation and soil to a height of 1,720 feet above sea level, however.
I live in the 21:st century, you insensitive clod!
This is a science article, right? Use SI units, kdawson.
This is kdawson we're talking about. We should be thankful he gave us any sort of units at all.
This guy's the limit!
There is nothing inherently superior about the metric system.
Sure there is. Ease of unit conversion and ease of communication with the REST OF THE FREAKING WORLD. We live in a global economy - we should start acting like it.
Why does dividing by 10 matter so much, anyway? Because you have 10 fingers?
Because we use a base 10 counting system for most calculations. Having a measurement system that is highly compatible with the numeral system most humans use makes sense.
Really, we should be trying to move to a system of measure that is base 2.
Really? Go ahead and tell your mother you came 1011 miles to see her - I'm sure she'll be impressed.
There may have been one earlier, but the Hall of Records was mysteriously washed away 100 years ago.
mod me funny
This type of tsunami is the exact same as what is predicted will ultimately wipe out most of the Eastern Seaboard. It will make Katrina and even the tsunami that hit in the Indian Ocean look like a cake walk. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/aug/10/science.spain
Go Illini!!!
The photos from the following day are impressive, but I'd like to compare it to what it looks like today: How much has been able to regrow in relatively cold climate in 50 years?
A tsunami may be only a few feet higher than average sea level as it crosses oceans, but when the mass of water piles up as it reaches shore, the runup can go hundreds of feet above sea level. If you're standing on the slope at a height of 800 feet above sea level, and the tsunami starts, which is more 'real' about the height of the tsunami -- the hundred-foot height of the wave in the open water of the bay, or that the runup is going to scour the ground clean almost a thousand feet farther up the slope than where you're standing?
You go ahead and pay $4 for a liter and I'll pay $4 for a gallon, that fact alone is reason enough to stick with US measurements.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
If you look at the map of the damage, the 1725 figure comes from the slope directly opposite where the honking huge chunk of rock fell 3000' feet to land in the water - which probably displaced all the water straight up and over the spur where the 1725 figure was recorded and then damage along the rest of the bay was more in line with the 100' figure.
"Grandma, I walked eleven miles to see you."
The funny thing about non base-10 number systems is that our language can't say them without spelling them out. The old joke about "There are 10 kinds of people in the world..." isn't very funny if you say it aloud or in your head: "There are two kinds of people in the world" or "There are one zero kinds of people in the world".
So I believe it's our language, not our fingers, that makes base ten feel natural. If we had grown up accustomed to counting "one two three ten eleven twelve thirteen twenty twenty-one twenty-two twenty-three thirty" then base four would feel natural. The characters "2506" would look as strange as hexadecimal and be as impossible to pronounce without spelling or conversion.
By the way, isn't the term "base 10" devoid of meaning? If our system were base four, then "base 10" would mean "base four" since the characters "10" in base four mean "4" in base ten. Whatever base you use, "10" is your way of writing the value of that base.
Back to the tsunami, it's disappointing to hear that the water was 290 fathoms high only very near it's source (the landslide). That's like saying "Your mama's so fat she jumped in the Pacific and made a tsunami a billion nanometers high."