Pakistan Earthquake Raises New Island

schwit1 writes with news that a recent 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Pakistan killed 45 people and caused a new island to form a few hundred meters off the country's coast. The island is roughly 35 meters long, and 7-14 meters high. "Seismologists suspect the island is a temporary formation resulting from a "mud volcano," a jet of mud, sand and water that gushed to the surface as the temblor churned and pressurized that slurry under the ocean floor." Long-time residents of the area say a similar island formed in 1968 after another earthquake, but disappeared a year later. "It is clear that 'the islands are not created because the ground was ... pushed up by the earthquake,' [said geophysicist Paul Earle], but more likely it was a secondary effect of shifting sediments. He also agrees the formation appears to have been caused by a mud volcano, but added that they don't need an earthquake to set them off. There are 'mud volcanoes in Yellowstone that have not been triggered by earthquakes,' he said."

Comments

wow,

[etash]

Benjamin Linus moved the island again.

PRC Will Claim the New Territory

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Pakistan has given in to the People's Republic of China (PRC) territory claims in the past, I am sure the PRC will claim this island as theirs!

Priorities

[Redmancometh]

45 people died, but the news story is about a new not-island less than the size of a football field. Nice.

Re:Priorities

[Thanshin]

Much more than 45 people died somewhere during the time it took you to write that post and you failed to even mention them. Nice.

Re:Priorities

[Trogre]

Absolutely correct.

Are we also not supposed to talk about the economic outfall as a result of the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami that killed many more?

If not for this new island, that recent earthquake would not have made it to the Slashdot: News for Nerds blog at all.

Re:Priorities

[jmhobrien]

You are right, but that is not news for nerds and stuff that matters.

Re:Priorities

[K. S. Kyosuke]

45 people died, but the news story is about a new not-island less than the size of a football field. Nice.

Big pile of mud -> Elbonia -> Dilbert -> Tech -> Stuff that matters. ;-)

Re:Priorities

[Sockatume]

You say that as though they haven't emphasised the humanitarian impact in literally the first sentence of the summary. The author's priorities are in the right place. You don't have to ignore everything but the humanitarian consequences to be showing compassion for them.

Re:Priorities

[onyxruby]

People die every single day, 107 people die every single minute of every single day. Earthquakes also happen fairly routinely in certain parts of the world. When they are large they are covered by the news, in particular their death tolls are well covered to the point many are saturated.

I understand you may not care for what I say, but just try to get the TV or major newspaper to cover an average person who died in an average way after they have died. The bottom line is that people simply don't care about people they don't know - it's not newsworthy. Death only becomes newsworthy when the person is (in)famous or dies in a notable way.

However the creation of a new island from an earthquake if far from an everyday occurrence. It is also notably something that strikes a scientific bell with a community that generally has at least a token interest in science.

Uh oh.

[RivenAleem]

Tensions are rising between Ankh-Morpork and Al Khali

Re:Dregs of journalism

[Sockatume]

I feel sorry for your inability to get excited about geology. You know that it's a fool that plays it cool by making his world a little colder.

Re:Meanwhile

[Chrisq]

No they're really not. No more than the US is a place you can get shot for just walking down the street -- you can make the case that it's true, but there's a lot of hyperbole in it that other people won't pick up on. If you haven't been there, or don't know people from there, stop trolling. It perpetuates myths about the world that just aren't true.

Complete rubbish. Things like politicians being shot for opposing blashpemy laws,Kidnapping of Christian and Hindu girls for forced marriage and conversion don't happen in the West. I suggest that unless you have never lived in an Islamic majority country you shut up about "it being just the same in the US".

Re:Meanwhile

[Chrisq]

Where exactly is this nation of Palestine you speak of?

I apologise for repeating the original poster's inaccurate terminology of the original poster, I should have corrected it to "Palestinian territories"