This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Does The "Ring Of Fire" Guarantee At Least One Magnitude 8 Aftershock, And Ten Of Magnitude 7 Or Higher?
For Japan, it's nowhere near over, at least if the Pasadena Jet Propulsion Laboratory (creator of such brainiac things as the Mars rovers) is correct. While Japan has experienced numerous magnitude 5 and 6 aftershocks (405 in total to be precise), the big ones are still to come: "Japan's largest quake on record, which hurled a 7-meter (23-foot) wave
landward after one plate slid beneath another off the coast of Sendai,
had an 8.9 magnitude. The aftershocks will likely include at least one
measuring 8 and 10 of magnitude 7, JPL geophysicist Andrea Donnellan
said. All are many times larger than the 6.3-level New Zealand quake in
February that leveled the Christchurch business district and killed 160." Should we get more 8+ earthquakes, the likelihood of further tsunamis unfortunately jumps exponentially. And while scientists have long been expecting "the Big One" to hit Los Angeles so far without success, unfortunately carrying over that logic to Japan is more than naive.
More from BusinessWeek on predicting earthquakes:
Pressure levels changed on the undersea plates extending 500 kilometers to the east and west of the epicenter, likely provoking aftershocks “for a long time,” said Eric Fielding, a principal scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Pasadena, California, research group is using data from Japan to help scientists forecast follow-on shifts in crustal plates.
“The segments south and north of the Sendai rupture zone will have large increased stresses,” Donnellan, a principle investigator who models probable shifts in the Earth's crust, said in written answers to Bloomberg. “While a few large earthquakes will occur soon after the last one, most will occur at much longer times, typically years, after the last one.”
Predicting earthquakes with precision eludes scientists, who until recently lacked data to improve forecasts. The disaster will aid research into how the mosaic of plates around the world can shift and trigger shocks, building on measurements from Indonesia in 2004 and Chile in 2010 that gave geophysicists insight into how the biggest tremors change Earth's geology.
Japan, the world's third-largest economy, lies on the so- called Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and fault lines surrounding the Pacific Basin including Sumatra, site of the Indonesian quake.
“Before 2004, most geophysicists taught that only limited parts of the Ring of Fire could be capable of generating really giant earthquakes,” Antonio Piersanti, head researcher of the Rome-based Italian Institute of Geology and Vulcanology, said in an e-mailed statement. “After the Sumatra event and especially after this last event maybe we should seriously consider the possibility that any part of the Ring of Fire could generate a 9-plus earthquake,” Piersanti said.
Combined that with another disclosure from the BBC blog and one can see why outbound flights from Tokyo may soon become a very high margin product:
UK nuclear expert John Large tells the
BBC that the wind direction off the east coast of Japan is moving round
to the south, which could take any radioactive plume from the Fukushima
plant over the Tokyo region.
Should Reactor 2 explode, that will likely be the tipping point for a major demographic shift as Tokyo citizens say enough is enough.
»
- 18119 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
Predicting the future one year out ? no problem. Dark,light what you whant more then that.
Ok I'll get back to you on that.
Then again we may have the Republican Quake in Missouri. It's all their fault.
we've been having quakes in arkansas... but, if the new madrid goes, the pipelines across the river at memphis are going to... be a problem. And not a small one. Aside from the fact that no one is prepared and I have significant doubts about social cohesion.
When God is on everyone's side, he is on no one's side, if you catch my drift.
People get together,anyone who cares about basic problem of our existance FED invited to vote in our poll and read out latest comments on yahoo FED article about QE3:
http://trendybull777.blog.com/2011/02/21/hello-world/
Voting poll is waiting for you click,take 5sec to make your choice,we must to reach critical level to be recognised by others to tove too!Thank you and keep all us together regardless government effords,we appreciate if you link us to other polls,blogs,sites to let people or your friiends to vote FED existence
A 3rd explosion? Fuck me. Hopefully, the radiation stays at relatively lower levels. The radiation we've seen so far, is survivable. It shouldn't get out of control, but we'll have to see. As ZH has said, Japan has little credibility on the info front right now. BUT they are doing their best, in a very tough situation (and probably better than most would do). That said, they should prioritize a little more and have fuel and backup pumps being helicoptered in.
Some Russian people are saying it won't be nearly as bad as Chernobyl..no graphite and poor but not Chernobyl bad design. But seeing is believing, and no doubt the world is watching. All nuclear plants built in such bad locations worldwide as these in Japan, need to be shut down. I'm still all for nuclear until fusion, because the alternative, IS worse. Just no more idiots building nuclear plants near the sea, volcano, or major fault line. They must be able to withstand a 9.5-10. We can do it safely.
Link to the story about the 3rd explosion
http://abcnews.go.com/International/japan-earthquake-reactor-fukushima-n...
These are trying times for even the most cultured and disciplined people, the Japanese.
????
Big BOLD text on the link, Not for Radiation use. It would appear this item is not intended for your suggested use.
Any comments?
Uh....I thought the tsunami was caused by an upthrust in the earth's crust.
Aftershocks are more like the vibrations resulting from ringing a bell.
So...why would there be another tsunami?