Slashdot Mirror


Tsunami Hit New York City Region In 300 BC

Hugh Pickens writes "Scientists say that sedimentary deposits from more than 20 cores in New York and New Jersey indicate a huge wave crashed into the New York City region 2,300 years ago, dumping sediment and shells across Long Island and New Jersey and casting wood debris far up the Hudson River. Steven Goodbred, an Earth scientist at Vanderbilt University, says that size and distribution of material would require a high velocity wave and strong currents to move it, and it is unlikely that short bursts produced in a storm would suffice. 'If we're wrong, it was one heck of a storm,' says Goodbred. An Atlantic tsunami is rare but not inconceivable, says Neal Driscoll, a geologist from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who is not associated with the research. The 1929 Grand Banks tsunami in Newfoundland killed more than two dozen people and snapped many transatlantic cables, and was set in motion by a submarine landslide set off by an earthquake."

23 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Fools, the fools! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The 1929 Grand Banks tsunami in Newfoundland killed more than two-dozen people and snapped many transatlantic cables, and was set in motion by a submarine landslide set off by an earthquake

    This is exactly why you shouldn't stack submarines. The fools!

  2. so this is what happened when atlantis sank .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    a big wave hits new york and new jersey. now just backtrack where the origin was, and boom! atlantis found.

    1. Re:so this is what happened when atlantis sank .. by Z00L00K · · Score: 2, Informative

      Never mind that - Atlantis seems to have been on Santorini in the Mediterranean, the rest is just speculation.

      What's more interesting is that if it has happened once it can happen again. Living by the coast is a blessing but also a curse. Living inland has it's good and bad sides too. More extreme temperature differences between winter and summer, but less risk for severe storms except for some areas that suffers tornadoes.

      So even if the ocean makes living easier it also comes with risk. But people are living there as well as on volcanoes and other dangerous places. The reason is that it happens so infrequently that the risk of dying is relatively low compared to many other risks.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  3. Yeah, but it was okay... by gyrogeerloose · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...because Rudy Giuliani was mayor at the time and handled it well. And never passed up an opportunity to mention that he did so, either.

    --
    This ain't rocket surgery.
  4. News for nerds by WARM3CH · · Score: 5, Funny

    300 years BC and you call it news? Good job Slashdot!

  5. This isn't a new worry by JoshuaZ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A few years ago I had a relative who was involved in a lot of the disaster planning for New Haven. Some scenarios were so bad that he more or less concluded that there wasn't any point in trying to make any substantial preparations because there wouldn't be anything they could do that would help. A large tsunami hitting New England was one of the situations. Either you get a warning on time or you don't. Not much local governments can do about it.

    1. Re:This isn't a new worry by u38cg · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well, indeed. A tsunamai hitting that part of the world would be, say, 200km long, very approximately. In open water, a tsunami is approximately a meter or so tall and travels at circa 1000km/h. So, roughly speaking, we have 0.5*((200km*pi*1m^2)*1000kg/m^3)*((1000km/s)^2)= pi*10^20 Joules. Now a megaton, roughly speaking, is 4.184*10^15 Joules. So, to deal with our posited tsunami, we will need pi*10^20/4.184*10^15 megatons of nuke, that is, around 75 000 megatons. The Tsar Bomba, the largest device ever tested, yielded 50 megatons. So, we would need some 1500 Tsar Bombas (or 750 if the theoretical maximum yield can be squeezed out of them). However, sadly for firework fans everywhere, the Soviet Union discontinued these highly useful devices, and so we are left with the current arsenal, which generally have a typical yield of 1.2 megatons or less. This means in turn we need some 63000 nuclear weapons. After START II, however the US reduced its arsenal to around 2200 in active deployment. In other words, learn to swim, boy!.

      --
      [FUCK BETA]
    2. Re:This isn't a new worry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Umm, sorry you got the math wrong.

      It is the tsunami WAVE that travels at 1000km/h. There is no way the water itself travels at that speed. (It is almost the speed of sound. Do you really believe tsunami waves cause ocean to fly hypersonic?)

      Think of the sound: it travels at 340m/s, which does NOT mean that the medium (air) travels at that speed.

      The correct way to estimate tsunami's energy, I believe, is to calculate its *potential* energy. I.e., (200km*pi*1m^2)*1000kg/m^3 * 9.8m/s^2 * (roughly) 0.5m = 3*10^9 J.

      Multiply by 2, because waves tend to have 50:50 mix of potential & kinetic energy, if my memory of classical mechanics is correct.

    3. Re:This isn't a new worry by supercell · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I disagree, there could be evacuation routes that would only have to move folks 2 miles inland to get out of harms way. A tsunami generated in the eastern Atlantic would take several hours to reach the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. giving time for some to evacuate low lying areas near the immediate coast.

  6. Re:Good news for the young earthers.. by gringofrijolero · · Score: 4, Funny

    The great flood must have been somewhere else. There weren't that many Jews living on Long Island back then. But poor New Jersey.. Even mother nature was dumping its garbage there.

    --
    Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
  7. Re:Good news for the young earthers.. by commodore64_love · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Even though I am an atheist, I still don't find this funny. Even if you don't believe, you should have enough knowledge of history to know that 300 BC is concurrent with Ancient Greece and the Roman Republic, and there was certainly no worldwide flood at that time. I guess I shouldn't be surprised you don't know your history, being your a product of the government school system, whose goal is to propagate ignorant and easily-malleable voters.

    Second virtually every culture in the world has a record of a flood circa 8000 BC, from the Jews to the Eqyptians the Iraqis, Indians, and Chinese. Apparently *something* happened that year... perhaps a side effect of the melting ice flows after the previous glaciation. Again I guess I shouldn't be surprised you didn't know this.

    Furthermore, and I'm guessing here, you're probably a member of the Democrats. Even if you're not a member you still should listen to their founder who said, "Whether my neighbor worships one god, many gods, or no gods, matter not to me. His belief does not harm my body, my property, nor my rights. I will allow my neighbor the liberty to worship as he pleases." Mr. Jefferson had enough intelligence to respect religious freedom, even if he did not agree with them. It's called tolerance. You might want to try emulating him instead of emulating a donkey's anus.

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  8. Re:Could happen again by Bandman · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're talking about La Palma.

    And yea, no one is really sure what will happen when it goes into the sea. It depends a great deal on how it goes, I suppose.

    My money is on Yellowstone violently erupting, which shakes apart La Palma.

    Which gets the attention of the martians...

  9. Re:Could happen again by Smitty825 · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're probably thinking about the Cumbre Vieja volcano, which is located off of the coast of Africa, and is believed to potentially cause a super-tsunami in the Atlantic.

    --

    Doh!
  10. Re:Good news for the young earthers.. by StillG60Rado · · Score: 3, Funny

    being your a product of the government school system, whose goal is to propagate ignorant and easily-malleable voters.

    Careful, you're superior private education is showing.

  11. Re:Good news for the young earthers.. by inasity_rules · · Score: 4, Funny

    Intolerant people should not be tolerated...

    Oh. Wait...

    --
    I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
  12. Re:Good news for the young earthers.. by kbrasee · · Score: 3, Funny

    Careful, you're superior private education is showing.

    And YOUR inferior education is showing.

  13. Re:Good news for the young earthers.. by Ginger+Unicorn · · Score: 4, Informative
    Second virtually every culture in the world has a record of a flood circa 8000 BC, from the Jews to the Eqyptians the Iraqis, Indians, and Chinese.

    citation please? some cultures have flood myths but where did you get the idea that they all pin the date down to circa 8000BC? and how circa is circa? Indeed the dates seem to be all over the place. They also seem to involve their cultures surviving the flood, which isn't much use to people trying to prop up the Genesis flood story. Unless noah's family traveled the globe restablishing exact replicas all the cultures of the world and then carried on as if nothing had happened. Presumably noah had at least one black kid, and one asian kid, etc.

    --
    (1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
  14. Re:Good news for the young earthers.. by commodore64_love · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Maybe this is why Commander Data doesn't use contractions. If you consistently say "you are" then there's no confusion.

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  15. Re:Good news for the young earthers.. by commodore64_love · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Missed the point. I'm not debating theology; I'm debating tolerance. I find it rather annoying that I hear certain "liberals" preach tolerance and then 5 minutes later they slam religious people like Jews, Christians, or Muslims.

    A true liberal doesn't give a damn what his neighbor believes, and he supports tolerance in ALL cases.

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  16. Re:Good news for the young earthers.. by Omestes · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Your analogy is REALLY flawed. Being Black doesn't imply a certain rational framework, or adherence to a certain theory. As far as I know, no ethnicity has a defining body of theory, that once they change their minds, they change their race.

    I just stopped believing that the Earth Revolves around the Sun, therefor I ceased to be white.

    Your statement is rather silly, since basically your saying that no group that holds a view contrary to science, reason, or evidence, should be discredited, even if this opens a very large can of worms, since there are so many contradictory views. This is especially true when you make a statement of an ontic nature, which is falsifiable such as the claims of the young earthers. Either the world is 3000 years old, or it isn't, and proof would exist that would prove or disprove one or the other claim. Faith never plays into it.

    Intolerance would be saying "never tolerate religious group x", which is almost as bad as racism, even if it is much more prevalent than racism. Though oddly religious groups seem much less tolerant than anyone else, since your are a bad bad person if you don't align with their sexual, social, or ideological mores.

    I have nothing against religion, or the religious as long as they don't try to muck with my life, or tell me what do based on what their supreme deity of choice told them, since that argument has no bearing on my life. If they keep their ideas away from me, I'll happily ignore them. UNTIL, that is, they try to pass of faith for reason because of religious arguments. The second they say something disprovable, it is fair game, and they shouldn't complain when someone attacks it with evidence, science, and reason.

    I cannot scientifically disprove God or gods, but I can easily disprove the world being 3000 years old, or similar claims.

    There is no right to be wrong, especially when you try to spread falsehood as unassailable truth (there is no such thing as an unassailable truth, truth should be attacked at every chance we have, just to make sure truth is REALLY truth, and some some pleasing falsehood that makes us happy).

    --
    A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
  17. Re:Good news for the young earthers.. by kimvette · · Score: 2, Insightful

    it depends on what your definition of tolerance is.

    To me tolerance is simply having the maturity to agree to disagree, acknowledging there is one correct and are many incorrect answers to a question, be it is there a flying spaghetti monster, the answer to 2+2, or whether we evolved.

    Tolerance to some liberals means that everyone should agree that there are no absolutes (which ironcically is an absolute statement) and libel, slander, or persecute anyone who disagrees with their idea. They speak with a forked tongue.

    Neocons don't do tolerance, period.

    Others think that tolerance means that everyone should agree that all statements are equally valid.

    FWIW, I'm a conservative (libertarian is closest to my world view) and I think tolerance means having the maturity to agree to disagree without forcing my world view on you. I do believe in god but I don't condemn those who don't.

    *shrug*

    --
    The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
  18. Re:Could happen again by Snowblindeye · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I can't remember the name of it, but I read about an island somewhere off the coast of Africa. It's a giant chunk of rock that's split in such a way that its eventual collapse into the ocean is near certain.

    Well, there's one scientist who thinks its near certain, and a BBC documentary that focused on his points of view and made them sound like fact. Doesn't mean it couldn't happen, but it's not the certainty that the documentary made it sound.

    If I recall correctly, other scientist are far from convinced that his assumptions are right. I believe some theories predict slow land slides instead, which wouldn't cause tsunamis.

  19. I've seen the evidence by Haxx · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I grew up 5 miles from the water on Central Long Island's "South Shore". When I was a kid my friends father had a large garden, about 80 yards by 20 yards. Every year when he would till/turn the soil, large crumbling shells would turn up. We always wondered why they were so close to the surface in a place that had been above sea level for millions of years. Maybe this is the answer.