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Upsurge in Big Earthquakes Predicted for 2018 (theguardian.com)
hcs_$reboot writes:
"Scientists say the number of severe quakes is likely to rise strongly next year because of a periodic slowing of the Earth's rotation," reports the Guardian. "They believe variations in the speed of Earth's rotation could trigger intense seismic activity, particularly in heavily populated tropical regions. Although such fluctuations in rotation are small -- changing the length of the day by a millisecond -- they could still be implicated in the release of vast amounts of underground energy, it is argued."
The theory goes that the slowdown creates a shift in the shape of the Earth's solid iron and nickel "inner core" which, in turn, impacts the liquid outer core on which the tectonic plates that form the Earth's crust rest. The impact is greater on the tectonic plates near some of the Earth's most populous regions along the Equator, home to about a billion people. Scientists from the University of Colorado looked at all earthquakes registering 7 and up on the Richter scale since the turn of the 20th century. In this timeframe, the researchers discovered five periods of significantly greater seismic activity.
The seismic activity follows a five-year period of slowing in the earth's rotatio, and "This link is particularly important because Earth's rotation began one of its periodic slowdowns more than four years ago," according to the article.
"The Earth is offering us a five-year heads-up on future earthquakes," says one of the researchers, adding "The inference is clear. Next year we should see a significant increase in numbers of severe earthquakes."
The theory goes that the slowdown creates a shift in the shape of the Earth's solid iron and nickel "inner core" which, in turn, impacts the liquid outer core on which the tectonic plates that form the Earth's crust rest. The impact is greater on the tectonic plates near some of the Earth's most populous regions along the Equator, home to about a billion people. Scientists from the University of Colorado looked at all earthquakes registering 7 and up on the Richter scale since the turn of the 20th century. In this timeframe, the researchers discovered five periods of significantly greater seismic activity.
The seismic activity follows a five-year period of slowing in the earth's rotatio, and "This link is particularly important because Earth's rotation began one of its periodic slowdowns more than four years ago," according to the article.
"The Earth is offering us a five-year heads-up on future earthquakes," says one of the researchers, adding "The inference is clear. Next year we should see a significant increase in numbers of severe earthquakes."
.... we start claiming we can predict earthquakes like we claim to be able to predict the weather or the climate?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Thanks a lot, Trump.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Your parent clearly believes this is Fake Science. He wants to know who funded this study because he wants to identity the sinister globalists, anarcho-feminists, crypto-Marxists, SJWs, eco-terrorists or, I don't know... hipsters. Or something.
"The theory goes that the slowdown creates a shift in the shape of the Earth's solid iron and nickel "inner core"
There was a really great documentary about the Earth's core not only slowing down, but stopping altogether:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0298814/combined/
This earth rotation issue was never a problem back when I was a kid. I blame the rise in jogging, specifically those joggers who jog eastward. If the joggers would just get together and only jog westward, the problem would be solved!
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Just say crap and if it happens you can claim to be "Right."
If it doesn't people tend to forget.
No downside either you are either a genius or people forget what you said.
Did you do the calculations for that ?
At least NASA has done those, according to Business Insider.
Effect from the dam filling to the rotation time seems to be just 0,06 microseconds.
That's the Republican tax scam. Er.. Plan!
They are just evidence of the real and more serious underlying problem: "Global warming causes mass insanity"
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
This is the kind of prediction you don't really want to be correct about. Would have liked to see some more technical explanation, but from a little googling I see there is a 32 year cycle of slowing which the scientists think might be due to mantle and crust sticking together more, which would also mess up the magnetic field a bit. I had no idea this was a thing. There are various other causes according to wikipedia apparently such as the Indian ocean earthquake which redistributed mass. So I wonder whether there would be any impact from water that melts from arctic ice. People living at the intersection of tectonic plates tend to think about this stuff.
Two links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://qz.com/1133304/as-eart...
Here's hoping that somehow it swallows Apple's marketing staff whole, but leaves humans unaffected.
slowing in the earth's rotatio
Rotation ratio?
Rotation potato?
Rotisserie potato?
A simple typo, and a good 5 minutes of day lost ;-)
Since that spectacular slowdown seems due to the earth core, it can hardly be linked to global warming, for a change.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Algore, and the thousands of climatologists that actually went to college, understand the science, and study that shit. But I'm sure you right-wing deniers who slept at a Holiday Inn know better...
Good choice of weasel words for non-peer-reviewed bullshit. Is this what /. has come to?
I am Audience.
Time to buy ocean front property in Idaho!
You need to distinguish between the past and the future.
The earth's rotation speed is precisely measurable (e.g. relative to distant stars/galaxies) and has been measured precisely for many decades. So regular slow-down, speed-up cycles in Earth's rotation speed in the past would not be speculated but rather measured.
Speculating that such regular cycles will continue into the future would be speculation about cycles, based on either just simple induction or perhaps based on some hypothesis about wobbling iron core and how inertia, elasticity etc is likely to make those wobbles continue.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
About the rocket launches possibly causing it.
If not, please please please try to get QUANTITATIVE ! Don't demonstrate innumeracy.
Hint about how to do this:
Numbers (e.g. about relative masses and movement amounts) do not go like this:
1
10
100
1,000
1,000,000
A shitload
A metric f@ck-tonne
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Mass of Earth: 5.972 x 10^24 kg
Mass of molten mostly-iron core of Earth: 1.97 x 10^24 kg
Say 1 millionth part of the core represents the net wobble in the core (total wild-ass guess)
So wobbling core mass: 1.97 x 10^18 kg
Mass of SpaceX Falcon 9 FT: 549,054 kg
So number of rocket departures from Earth needed to be roughly, really roughly equivalent to effect on Earth's rotation of wobbly molten core
2.97 x 10^18 / 549,054 =
could be on the order of 3.59 x 10^12 (that is 3.59 trillion) rocket departures
(give or take 3 orders of magnitude for shitty assumptions, but you get my general point?)
Number of actual space rocket launches in 2017: 76
So,.... no. It's not rockets, by a long shot (Ba dum Tss!)
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Great. I can expect next year to be filled with "Global Warming Causes Earthquakes!" stories. Yay.
Here is one just to piss you off. As the loss of Greenland Ice cap accelerates in speed due to global warming and many millions of tonnes of ice quickly calve off into the Greenland Sea the reduction in weight of the ice cap over the land will result in upthrust and very large earth quakes and perhaps volcanoes where there have been few and few are known to exist. The same also applies to the continent of Antarctica as it loses the ice cap. So yes natural and man made global warming can cause seismic events in the long term it already has in recent history. As the ice cap melted off the top of North America the upthrust of the center of the continent did cause earth quakes and is still causing them to a less extent to this day.A sudden upthrust event in Greenland caused by the rapid loss of the ice cap may not happen soon but upthrust will occur and is scientifically predictable in the same way that other huge events like a Maunder Minimum of the sun are predictable.
Farting huge quantities of gas and liquids into shale rock to bring up oil and gas also is know to cause local earth quakes but again we have those, particularly in offices who deny that this is what is happening. I am sure that they will also point to this paper and say it was the slowing of the earth that is causing the recent earth quakes around their oil and gas fields. The misuse of the information gleamed by scientists is nothing new, the shills working as scientists for the petro chemical industry, the tobacco industry, the farm chemical industry have been doing it for years and are quite effective in creating lies. I ask you this if man made global warming is a huge scientific lie why is the evidence of this occurance proving to be irrefutable? And more importantly what would the scientist stand to gain from faking or fudging the related climate and atmospheric data they are all seeing? Paid scientists have been known to fake and hide data regarding tobacco usage, pesticides and many other commercially golden man made products that have killed millions. Show me which industry with a vested interest in man made global warming or Geo-science is sponsoring these flawed findings or just STFU
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
> and is scientifically predictable in the same way that other huge events like a Maunder Minimum of the sun are predictable.
Or, indeed, the effects of increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.