8.8 Earthquake Near Japanese Coast

radioweather writes "USGS is reporting a 8.8 (was estimated first at 7.9) magnitude earthquake off of the east coast of Honshu, Japan. Details from USGS. Tsunami warning issued. Japan's Meteorological agency is saying 20-foot or higher waves are possible from a Tsunami near Miyagi prefecture."

Comments

USGS continues to upgrade

[Kalidor]

Quake was upgraded to 8.9 some time ago. Also aftershocks continue.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Maps/region/Asia_eqs.php

This is worst than in the movies

[Pecisk]

Wave moves slowly and silently inland, and carries parts of houses in full flames (!!!). This is insane.

http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2011/03/11/sot.tsunami.hit.japan.cnn?hpt=T1

Mother Nature shows it's power. For better or worse.

Re:This is worst than in the movies

[MichaelSmith]

To drill a hole in a metal surface you need to start by creating a little depression so that the drill won't slide around. A manual center punch is a short steel rod. The sharp end goes against the metal surface. The blunt end you hit with a hammer. An automatic center punch has a spring between the sharp and blunt ends. You press the blunt end so that energy collects in the spring. When sufficient energy is collected the sharp end snaps out all at once and makes the dimple in the surface. Glass is brittle and fails catastrophically under concentrated load. If your car floods you may not be able to open a window because pressure will stop it sliding. My automatic center punch cost 12 aussie bucks at a hardware store. I keep it in my van, and another in my tool kit where it actually gets used for its intended purpose.

Re:This is worst than in the movies

[Remloc]

As someone who woke up 35 miles from Northridge that Martin Luther King Day, it is NOT silent. You can hear the rock grinding.

8.9 Now, Tsunamis Ahead

[rsmith-mac]

Since Slashdot summaries are always a bit dated, it's been bumped up to an 8.9 by the USGS. The good news is that it was off-shore and 15.2mi down, the bad news is that it was off-shore and generated a large tsunami that is still wrecking havoc in Japan and may be heading elsewhere.

Best of luck to the Japanese; if anyone is prepared it's them, but I don't know how one prepares for something quite like this.

Meanwhile for the US there are active tsunami warnings in Hawaii, and NOAA has just issued a watch for the US West Coast.

Local News

[ZirconCode]

Sitting in Japan, translating from the news here~

largest earthquake since 300 years
nuclear power plants affected but nothing leaked
some factory at the coast started burning, they're showing it over and over again
8 people so far found dead
tsunami along almost the entire coast, 3meter to 10meters

It's very bad,

They're also warning of another earthquake which is predicted to happen shortly

Re:Local News

[ZirconCode]

Financial markets went down, Prime Minister already reacted and sent out military and more If you're in Japan: remain calm, move away from coast, keep (clean) water in bathtub & food, DON'T CALL TOKYO

Warnings for entire Pacific area in effect!

[muckracer]

Japan already got smashed. Further warnings for:

RUSSIA / MARCUS IS. / N. MARIANAS / GUAM / WAKE IS. /
  TAIWAN / YAP / PHILIPPINES / MARSHALL IS. / BELAU / MIDWAY IS. /
  POHNPEI / CHUUK / KOSRAE / INDONESIA / PAPUA NEW GUINEA /
  NAURU / JOHNSTON IS. / SOLOMON IS. / KIRIBATI / HOWLAND-BAKER /
  HAWAII / TUVALU / PALMYRA IS. / VANUATU / TOKELAU / JARVIS IS. /
  WALLIS-FUTUNA / SAMOA / AMERICAN SAMOA / COOK ISLANDS / NIUE /
  AUSTRALIA / FIJI / NEW CALEDONIA / TONGA / MEXICO /
  KERMADEC IS / FR. POLYNESIA / NEW ZEALAND / PITCAIRN /
  GUATEMALA / EL SALVADOR / COSTA RICA / NICARAGUA / ANTARCTICA /
  PANAMA / HONDURAS / CHILE / ECUADOR / COLOMBIA / PERU

Re:Warnings for entire Pacific area in effect!

[sunspot42]

There's a warning out now for the West Cost of the US. Wave expected to hit between 7-7:30 AM PST. Only expected to be 3-4 feet high at this time. Avoid the beach.

http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/

Re:Warnings for entire Pacific area in effect!

[muckracer]

Estimated travel times of tsunami through Pacific (mirrored/relinked from the media, since NOAA and especially the West Coast Center sites are being hammered right now):

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/bild-750254-190518.html

Insane!

[whoever57]

I am just outside Tokyo and the shaking here was insane. The building shook for about 2 minutes, then it died down, but very shortly later the after-quakes hit. Over three hours after the initial quake and the building is still shaking. Trains are shut down, so people can't get home.

Not log10, 10^(11.8 + 1.5M)

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi,

It's a common misconception that the power of a mag 9 earthquake is 10x more than an 8, or 1,000x that of a 6. It's not. It's more like 31,000x stronger than a 6. If you've ever had the misfortune to experience a 6, you can appreciate that the energy released by these big ones are rather hard to contemplate.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/measure.php
        1 J = 1e7 erg
        1 PJ = 1e15 J
      Energy_petajoules = ( 10^(11.8 + 1.5*Ms) ) * 1e-07 * 1e-15

here's a picture of what this looks like, although ring size scaling has been reduced from the above formula to fit on the screen.

West Coast Tsunami warning/watch

[dltaylor]

http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/2011/03/11/lhvpdd/03/messagelhvpd9-03.htm

Tsunami monitoring bouys

[DerekLyons]

You can see live data from the Tsunami warning bouys here.

Re:Courtesy of the Sun

[MichaelSmith]

Meaning what? Neutrinos come from the core of the sun at a constant rate. They have nothing to do with solar flares, and the Earth is mostly transparent to them anyway. If they did dump energy into the rock on a small enough scale to cause something like this, then we would feel it too, in our bodies. We don't. Most of the radiation in the flare is stopped by the magnetosphere, the atmosphere and our bodies, where it damages DNA. I would be surprised if it penetrates 10 cm into rock, let alone 25 km.

Re:Casualties...

[siddesu]

22 deaths reported so far, but it is still very early to tell. Still, since it happened during daytime, and in a region that is a bit less sparsely populated (http://www.chizuyainoue.jp/j_population/pop_density/1.pdf) than average, the fatalities will probably not be as high as the Awaji/Kobe earthquake of 1995 (when over 6000 people died, most of them in fires).

But it was a rather scary affair - I was in Tokyo, in the street, and having trouble keeping my balance. Can't imagine what it felt like in a high rise, or closer to the epicenter.

Re:Scale

[Anonymous Coward]

For any quake that would measure over 3.5 on the Richter scale, the USGS uses the Moment Magnitude Scale instead. The 8.8 (well, 8.9) refers to the latter scale.

Re:Loss of Coolent Accident?

[uncle slacky]

Correction - no leak, and the fire is not in the reactor building:
http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectioncode=132&storyCode=2059127

See also http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/ for updates.