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Earthquake causes Tsunami
ShadowDancer
When I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie."London, UK
in Zocalo v2.0
An [URL=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4125481.stm]earthquake[/URL] of 8.9 has killed thousands in S. Asia. what a thing to happen after christmas:( it's affected many of the prime tourist areas in Thailand, the Maldives, Sri Lanka etc.
Death toll is at over 1000 in India, 2000 in Sri Lanka, and is expected to rise dramatically everywhere else
Death toll is at over 1000 in India, 2000 in Sri Lanka, and is expected to rise dramatically everywhere else
Comments
[url]http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqinthenews/2004/usslav/[/url]
Indonesia: 4,185 dead
India: 2,000 dead
Thailand: 257 dead[/quote]
[url]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4125481.stm[/url]
Doubled from what it was four hours ago and currently there's night in the area which makes finding victims hard, so these numbers are definitely going to rise.
Good thing it wasnt that hard where she was.
As for casualties, my reading says Thailand has not updated their reports since this morning - and at that time BBC was saying that they expected a substantial increase from the tourist coastal areas of Thailand.
They also haven't updated the death totals since the time ET posted. We probably won't know for days the real totals on this.
Given the speed of tsunami propagation (somewhere around 600 km/h)... I wonder if an early-warning system (linked either to equipment for detecting quakes and calculating epicenter / magnitude, or wave detection systems in ocean or orbit)... would be feasible aginst such disasters?
Vessels in coastal waters could probably *not* undertake much (neither reach deep sea, where the tsunami is smaller, nor dock to evacuate people)... but people on shore could surely accomplish much with, say, fifteen minutes.
Does anyone know... has any country or region attempted to establish such a system?
[url]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4108697.stm[/url]
How can they say their was no warning!!!!!!!!
A water wave is a most efficient means of transmitting energy. It involves the movement of energy only, not mass. How it works is the water molecules move in an "orbit", where they go in a circle parallel to the direction of movement of the wave. The larger the wave, the faster and larger the orbit. In deep water, these orbits are perfectly circular, which is why you don't see much of a wave above water level (ones you do see are generally wind-blown crests). This is why a tsunami looks really small in the middle of the ocean, and why boats out there don't notice this huge wave going past at 2/3 the speed of sound.
Once a wave reaches shallower water (water where the depth is less than the diameter of the orbit), it begins to hit bottom (or feel bottom or something like that - can't remember the exact term). This causes the orbits to become squashed and non-circular, and so causes the wave to crest, appearing above the water surface as a swell. When the height of the wave above the water surface becomes greater than half the wave length, it breaks and becomes covered in people riding floating devices. This is why tsunamis become much "larger" when they approach land (usually when the reach the continental shelf). Up until the wave hits bottom, there is almost no energy loss in the movement (because the water molecules arn't actually having any displacement - they move in a circle and return to their original position). But once it hits bottom, the energy loss goes up.
Any errors in the above I blame on my geography textbook holding up my 21" monitor and me being too lazy to get it out to check facts. :)
Article states this quake actually effected the Earths Rotation. Is that normal for Earth quakes?
[B]Given the speed of tsunami propagation (somewhere around 600 km/h)... I wonder if an early-warning system (linked either to equipment for detecting quakes and calculating epicenter / magnitude, or wave detection systems in ocean or orbit)... would be feasible aginst such disasters?
Does anyone know... has any country or region attempted to establish such a system? [/B][/QUOTE]
Yeah, such systems do exist all along the US west coast that when a earthquake occurs sensors indicate it, trigger a system, which will warn low lying areas via a loud speaker alarm. From what I heard on the news tonight, most of the pacific ring has these systems since Tsunamis are common there. But the Indian ocean's bordering countries do not becuase Tsunamis are so rare in that area. As a result they had no warning becuase they never expected a Tsunami of any real strength to occur in that region. Afterthought always reveals things that forethought misses.
...I get the impression this is only the beginning of series of little purges, Mah Natures immune system getting rid of atleast some of this 'fungus' on her back...
.....us.
Tectonic processes go... just like before. Ever so slowly towards ceasing, towards cooling down... unless the Sun starts expanding before (and Earth decelerates into it).
But before that happens... countless other things will happen. Seas will disappear with a high degree of certainty, and whether complex life remains on Earth... will depend entirely on which fate our species encountered.
Depending on choices... humanity will encounter different fates. In one scenario, we will indeed miscalculate... and go extinct. In another, we attain independence of Earth, Sun and natural ecosystems.
With independence... will hopefully come ability to preserve oneself... and help others. Meaning, if things go well... life on Earth will not wind down as certainly as one might expect.
It may continue... on other planets, moons, ships, stations, orbitals, Dyson spheres, whetever you wish... and perhaps even on Earth, with the difference that the planet follows a different orbit.
While I agree that we were meant to be part of the eco systems of Earth, and not the brutal abusers of it, I really don't think nature would consider family and friends a "Fungus", more like spoiled children who need a lesson in responsibility.
It's almost akin to saying that someone with Cancer has that disease because they are angry and hateful, and so their body has reacted to that in such a way.
I agree that we CAN survive our mistakes, and most likely will, although the cost may be something we would never have paid had we been able to see past our noses...
As to human influence on the Tectonic plates? I think indirectly we have had one.
What happens as all the glaciers melt, and the polar Ice Caps melt? A huge shift in mass, which in turn creates a huge shift in pressure and weight in places that never had it before with the extra water, not to mention the places that had it and now don't.
We're talking about a solid mass (Ice) sitting on top of another solid mass (Earth's Crust) which in turn sits on a fluid mass (Earth's Mantle). When you change the dynamics, you have to expect changes in other places to seek out the balance and settle...
Knowing that a shift on one side of the planet reverberates through the fluid core, it's only natural to set off a few dominos once in a while in places you would never have expected...
So, by changing our climate, we indirectly change our geophysical balance as well.
Just my thoughts on it...
[B]We're talking about a solid mass (Ice) sitting on top of another solid mass (Earth's Crust) which in turn sits on a fluid mass (Earth's Mantle).[/B][/QUOTE]Yeah, couple kilometers thick ice layer is HEAVY.
Big part of Antarctis is under sealevel because weight of all that ice over it.
Plates of earth's crust are like floating pieces in water, if there's additional weight on it it sinks lower until balance is reached, in other case it rises until balance is gained again.
Actually whole Finland is still rising (western Finland fastest, eastern slowest) from bump to which it was pressed by continental glacier of ice age.
But talking about tsunamis just wait until western flank of Cumbre Vieja collapses to ocean floor.
[url]http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~ward/papers/La_Palma_grl.pdf[/url]
--RC
the most spectacular natural events on Earth. Although no
such lateral collapse punctuates the historical past, residual
debris found on the seafloor evidence their abundance in recent
geological time. Moore (1964) first identified the remains
of lateral collapses off the flanks of Hawaii. Since then,
dozens have been recognized adjacent to island volcanoes in
nearly every ocean (Moore et al. 1994; Keating and McGuire,
2000).[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I had seen a special on that in the Hawaiian Islands a few years back. They said that one of the tsunami's created by a past Hawaiian lateral slide had created a wave 200 feet high and scoured the coast of Australia inland for almost 20 miles... :eek:
The big island of Hawaii has a huge crack alone the Eastern flank of Kiluea Iki (Eastern Rift Zone - and was responsible for creating the Pu'u O'o vent which has since destroyed itself).
When you drive the Volcano Highway through Volcano National Park you cross a section of the Highway that has been displaced several feet toward the ocean.
One of these days, that whole side of the island will slide into the sea like many times before...
[URL=http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041227/wl_sthasia_afp/asiaquaketoll_041227114642&e=1]Yahoo news[/URL]
[B]Well...
While I agree that we were meant to be part of the eco systems of Earth, and not the brutal abusers of it, I really don't think nature would consider family and friends a "Fungus", more like spoiled children who need a lesson in responsibility.
It's almost akin to saying that someone with Cancer has that disease because they are angry and hateful, and so their body has reacted to that in such a way.
I agree that we CAN survive our mistakes, and most likely will, although the cost may be something we would never have paid had we been able to see past our noses...
As to human influence on the Tectonic plates? I think indirectly we have had one.
What happens as all the glaciers melt, and the polar Ice Caps melt? A huge shift in mass, which in turn creates a huge shift in pressure and weight in places that never had it before with the extra water, not to mention the places that had it and now don't.
We're talking about a solid mass (Ice) sitting on top of another solid mass (Earth's Crust) which in turn sits on a fluid mass (Earth's Mantle). When you change the dynamics, you have to expect changes in other places to seek out the balance and settle...
Knowing that a shift on one side of the planet reverberates through the fluid core, it's only natural to set off a few dominos once in a while in places you would never have expected...
So, by changing our climate, we indirectly change our geophysical balance as well.
Just my thoughts on it... [/B][/QUOTE]
yeah, the theory of isosasy . im just not altogether convinced that we've caused enough ice to melt to have a significant impact on tectonics. i mean, the area under scandinavia is still rising after the last ice age 10 000yrs ago, so after only 100 years or so......:rolleyes:
[B]It's almost akin to saying that someone with Cancer has that disease because they are angry and hateful, and so their body has reacted to that in such a way.
[/B][/QUOTE]
You could also say that we have become the cancer on earth.
Edit: Edited the smilie.
In my opinion, infrastructure for early warning *must* be prepared. Because some day, inevitably... an earthquake will repeat. One can only try ensuring that casualties... will not repeat in equal extent.
------
Aside from that... I can only hope... that affected countries can mobilize enough people to help communities which suffered... and non-affected countries deliver enough financial / material / medical aid.
Such disaster will doubtlessly leave a serious wound... but how big... depends on how the aftermath is handled.
BBC is reporting that Indonesia is estimating 21,000-25,000 people dead now, but have not yet updated their official totals from 5,000.
[url]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4129233.stm[/url]
Rueters is reporting that total deaths could reach a mininum of 55,000 using estimates of 25,000 in Indonesia and 20,000 in Sri Lanka. Both countries have yet to update their official totals of 5,000 and 11,000 respectively.
[url]http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7188962[/url]
From what I have read they still don't have communications through which to relay up-to-date numbers from some of the more remote regions of Indonesia.
:(
- PJH
[URL=http://www.clarkefoundation.org/]Clarke Foundation[/URL]
[QUOTE]...Curiously enough, in my first book on Sri Lanka, I had written about another tidal wave reaching the Galle harbour (see Chapter 8 in The Reefs of Taprobane, 1957). That happened in August 1883, following the eruption of Krakatoa in roughly the same part of the Indian Ocean.[/QUOTE]
- PJH