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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."
Look on the bright side - if the tsunami washes over Australia at least it'll put the bushfires out.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Quake was upgraded to 8.9 some time ago. Also aftershocks continue.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Maps/region/Asia_eqs.php
Code softly but carry a big magnet.
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.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
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.
That would require effort.
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
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.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
You can see live data from the Tsunami warning bouys here.
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/
when you have massive ejections like yesterdays they can certainly contribute to instability in the Earth's magnetic field, which leads to tectonic shifting.
Er, no. The way the game of "science" is played, one must first show data establishing a valid statistical correlation between coronal mass ejections and earthquakes, then a plausible model establishing causation. Or, present the plausible model establishing causation, and then predict earthquakes to occur in the future, with a success rate that differs from random chance in a statistically significant manner.
The reason the relationship between CMEs and earthquakes is not "a more accepted concept than it is", is that no one has done either of the above. It shouldn't be hard: The occurrence of CMEs varies with the sunspot cycle and, therefore, one would expect a cyclic variation in earthquakes if this hypothesis were true. Note that near the solar maximum we expect two or three CMEs per day, so this has to be figured in, too.
Reviewing your links:
1. The Mukherjee and Mukherjee paper notes that there was increased solar activity, and then an earthquake occurred (the 2001 Gujarat earthquake). In fact, in the "entire world, a total of 65 earthquakes have been reported on the same day". However, there is no evidence presented that that was an unusually high (or low) number of earthquakes for a day, that other earthquakes occurred on similar days with high solar activity, or that they did not occur on days with low solar activity. In fact, some of that data presented -- in particular, the GOES X-Ray flux data -- is irrelevant to the argument, since X-Rays do not affect the Earth's magnetosphere (the protons arriving two days later, do that) and, in any event, they cannot pass through the Earth's atmosphere and so cannot affect the surface (let alone the rock below). Despite the heading of section 2 of the paper, no "correlation" between CMEs and earthquakes is presented -- just a single coincidence. I went to the dentist on 26 January 2001 -- did that also cause the Gujarat earthquake? The same amount of evidence is presented for both hypotheses.
2. The de Arcangelis, et al. paper does not even mention a causal relationship between CMEs and earthquakes. Rather, it notes that the statistical properties of the two phenomena are the same: Their distributions are both power-law. This is interesting, but so is the distribution of Internet links, and a million other phenomena. It's nice work, but does not support your hypothesis.
3. This guy just took a single month's worth of earthquakes and compared it with "solar activity" (without defining the term). Even the author didn't make any conclusions as a result, so why should the reader? Besides, 2010 was one of the quietest years of solar activity in human history -- just wait 'til 2013!
4. Do you have a link to the entire Jain paper, or are you citing the abstract as the reference? Without the paper it's hard to conclude anything, but even in the abstract the author states, "Our investigation preliminarily shows that each earthquake under study was preceded by a solar flare of GOES importance B to X class by 10-100 hrs. However, each flare was not found followed by earthquake of magnitude >4.0." This situation can occur with unrelated events, simply when one (a flare) is more common than another (an earthquake). Note that B-class flares are incredibly common, and in many years this level of energy represents the standard amount of X-ray flux arriving from the sun, without any flares.
All of the above does not prove, or even argue, that CMEs do not cause earthquakes. Rather, it says that no significant evidence of such a link has been established. Until it has, one might argue with equal validity that any other random physical phenomenon does, too.
As Usual- I just saw a CBS Weather girl actually say "And it is so surprising that it is sunny on the west coast with all this going on" ! Are media people born with dog shit in their brains or does a small dog have to sit over them while sleeping and make nightly deposits to get it to the level they have in adult life?
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