8.8 earthquake hits japan, followed by tsunamis

This is horrific, but I think that if any country is capable of dealing with this type of shit, it's Japan.
 
Damn, man. The wrath of mother nature strikes hard. :/

God bless all those affected.
 
Wow, 88 000 people reported missing, that's insane.
 
This morning they were talking about how the tsunami would hit other pacific costal regions as well. Any news of the damage there?
 
The Monkey said:
This morning they were talking about how the tsunami would hit other pacific costal regions as well. Any news of the damage there?
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I'm not sure the waves caused by the Earthquake have hit any other countries as of yet but there are a few on alert that are expected to be hit. Hopefully they'll be prepared in advance to evacuate areas likely to suffer badly and to cope with it as best they can.
 
On the 19th of March our moon will be the closest it's been to us in 18 years.
 
kineaesth said:
image dump, crossposting from 2chan.

this thread is currently going http://dec.2chan.net/50/res/1178401.htm
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Christ... normally my reaction to horrific events is "wow, that's awful, but hey there's humour in everything, don't get so down on the world yo there's hope for everything", but as I scrolled through the pictures I couldn't do anything but stare and feel a little bit of fear towards our planet.
 
It's going to take forever for Japan to recover from this ... good god ... or should I say BAD god?
 
Will March 19 'Supermoon' Trigger Natural Disasters?
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On March 19, the moon will swing around Earth more closely than it has in the past 18 years, lighting up the night sky from just 221,567 miles (356,577 kilometers) away. On top of that, it will be full. And one astrologer believes it could inflict massive damage on the planet.
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http://www.space.com/11084-supermoon-earthquake-storm-natural-disasters.html

could be speculation or mysticism, but this could be bad

Also my friend in Taiwan could have died twice this week, he had a major asthma attack and then this tsunami and thank god he said they were spared. He lives in Taipei, Taiwan. Also my ex girlfriend just had her honeymoon in Hawaii and just made it back to California this morning. I'm so glad both of them are all right :)

EDIT: sorry didn't read the posts above but I read this yesterday and didn't have time to post it.
 
AKIRA said:
Something about this year guys...i'm normally a logical/scientific person but is it just me or as soon as 2011 hit, shit just started to go downhill...

I mean, it started with all those fish/crabs/birds dying randomly on new years eve/days after..weather over here is just absolutely retarded(not really a reason, pretty sure it's la-nina that's causing it if i'm not mistaken) but a lot of my friends/family have been pretty miserable for the last few months..

I dunno maybe it's just me haha


But stay strong Japan..
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Good thing natural disasters never happened before the memories of currently alive people!
 
Stylo said:
I'm not sure the waves caused by the Earthquake have hit any other countries as of yet but there are a few on alert that are expected to be hit. Hopefully they'll be prepared in advance to evacuate areas likely to suffer badly and to cope with it as best they can.
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They were saying last night, before my last post, that Indonesia was going to be hit by the wave in 2 hours. So it must have hit by now.
 
This is horrible. Spoke to my friend in Japan and he is ok, so I am relieved somewhat.

I hope it doesn't get any worse for them. Let's hope they can start recovering soon.
 
Those pictures are astounding.

And that girl on the far right in picture 4 is cute.
 
Vegeta897 said:
Those pictures are astounding.

And that girl on the far right in picture 4 is cute.
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the picture towards the end of the children praying almost made me cry :(

Its nice to see the world come together like this, as I'm sure we'll be helping out Japan for months and years to come
 
Krynn72 said:
They were saying last night, before my last post, that Indonesia was going to be hit by the wave in 2 hours. So it must have hit by now.
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To Google!

Ah, there's a bit of info on Indonesia in this article, apparently no immensely devastating effects.

Indonesia lifted its tsunami alert after the quake triggered just a 10cm rise in sea levels.
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Also, people may want to check this out. It's a doo-dad that has info on the alert levels of areas in The Pacific that have been or could potentially be affected.

A few more countries have had minor effects. Probably why they're not being reported on in detail.

In Taiwan, authorities said minor tsunamis reached the island's east and northeast coasts.
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Latin American countries along the Pacific from Mexico to Peru have still got tsunami warnings in place, while Ecuador has ordered preventive coastal evacuations.
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Nabobalis said:
:hmph: There I thought space.com was a decent website. *sigh*

There is no evidence and the entire premise is pure bull.
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This is just what people do. Seems more so than lately. Any time anything bad happens there has so be some super ultra disaterous overriding principle that caused it. Nothing is allowed to simply naturally happen. I mean how in any way would tension building on a tectonic plate at a subduction zone ever be affected any sort of graviational pull? Hell, even if it was - the gravity would pull both toward the subduction and away from it just as it does with the tides. And then even further into insanity if that managed to somehow "loosen" the friction that was flexing the plate, it only served to cause a weaker earthquake than had it kept flexing without gravitational interference and rebounded at a later date.

Of course all of that is impossible. The force the moon's gravity produces is barely enough to move a fully liquid substance more than a few feet in either direction. Think of it as the effect of the gravity of a todderly walking by you somehow causing your knee to dislocate.

Oh and there's always the fact that the moon has been constantly moving away from the Earth since it formed... so I guess we've been having fewer and fewer earthquakes throughout history?

It's a disaster. It happens to places on fault lines. Let's not concern ourselves with trying to figure out ridiculous causes and accept scientific fact... then focus on how we can help them now and help prevent similar situations in the future.
 
Viperidae said:
If ya'll are interested in the earthquake details: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2011/usc0001xgp/#details

I didn't know the Pacific plate subducted into the Eurasian plate at 8.3cm per year on the Japanese fault. That's absurdly fast, if you think about how much material is moving.

The quake occured at a depth of 24km. Imagine if it had been closer to the surface...
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Would the tsunami be smaller? Since less water is displaced I would think.
 
I honestly don't know enough about earthquakes to give a guess. I'm not actually sure it would be worse closer to the surface, since it occured so far from Japan itself. It might be that shallower quakes are safer in the ocean...?

What I do know is that P-waves (compressional) occur at greater depth and travel faster and further, but do less surface damage than S-waves, which can't travel through liquid.
 
I'm honestly not sure how earthquake depth and water depth relate to tsunami strength.

I do know that tsunami wave speed is directly related to water depth. The shallower the water, the faster it's moving.

Wouldn't an earthquake just beneath deep water cause the most powerful tsunamis?
 
I can't watch this on the news anymore, and it's not because of the human tragedy. Rolling news is just endlessly consuming as many eyewitness videos as it can, going 'hey look at this'. It's disgusting and voyeuristic, and I can't help but feel like it plays perfectly into some bullshit public spectacle narrative about associating the Japanese with disaster. Like they're smirking behind their hands at Japanese people ducking and covering because it reminds them of Godzilla, Mothra or Hiroshima.

News is not entertainment, so stop packaging it like it is.
 
kupocake said:
I can't watch this on the news anymore, and it's not because of the human tragedy. Rolling news is just endlessly consuming as many eyewitness videos as it can, going 'hey look at this'. It's disgusting and voyeuristic, and I can't help but feel like it plays perfectly into some bullshit public spectacle narrative about associating the Japanese with disaster. Like they're smirking behind their hands at Japanese people ducking and covering because it reminds them of Godzilla, Mothra or Hiroshima.

News is not entertainment, so stop packaging it like it is.
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I agree. It's in the "Youtube Spotlight" right now, and these videos are all the rage there.
 
StarBob said:
This is just what people do. Seems more so than lately. Any time anything bad happens there has so be some super ultra disaterous overriding principle that caused it. Nothing is allowed to simply naturally happen. I mean how in any way would tension building on a tectonic plate at a subduction zone ever be affected any sort of graviational pull? Hell, even if it was - the gravity would pull both toward the subduction and away from it just as it does with the tides. And then even further into insanity if that managed to somehow "loosen" the friction that was flexing the plate, it only served to cause a weaker earthquake than had it kept flexing without gravitational interference and rebounded at a later date.

Of course all of that is impossible. The force the moon's gravity produces is barely enough to move a fully liquid substance more than a few feet in either direction. Think of it as the effect of the gravity of a todderly walking by you somehow causing your knee to dislocate.

Oh and there's always the fact that the moon has been constantly moving away from the Earth since it formed... so I guess we've been having fewer and fewer earthquakes throughout history?

It's a disaster. It happens to places on fault lines. Let's not concern ourselves with trying to figure out ridiculous causes and accept scientific fact... then focus on how we can help them now and help prevent similar situations in the future.
Click to expand...

Thank you, it seems just hours after this happen astrologers are jumping up and down in glee and it irritates me that media in general is so shit with science.

So many people have died on this tragic day, it is not an event to plede your bull :frown:
 
Raziaar said:
I'm honestly not sure how earthquake depth and water depth relate to tsunami strength.

I do know that tsunami wave speed is directly related to water depth. The shallower the water, the faster it's moving.

Wouldn't an earthquake just beneath deep water cause the most powerful tsunamis?
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Let's see what I can remember from my old geology class...

I know that the depth at which the earthquake occurs in the ground (below the bottom of the ocean) can determine it's effect at the surface. The more shallow it is, the more energy reaches the surface. I think that the water depth has less to do with the size of the tsunami (when it is created) and more to do with the magnitude of the earthquake, but I could be wrong. However, the size of the tsunami after the earthquake has occured correlates directly to the depth of the water. As the wave goes from deep water to the shallow water of the shelf, the is compressed, gets taller, and travels much slower. In deep open water it can travel at somewhere around the speed of sound and the actual wave on the surface might be imperceivable or only a few inches in height.

Now that I think about it, I assume that if an earthquake occurs in deeper water, the ensuing tsunami would be larger because there would be a larger medium to contain the transferred energy of the wave. That's my hypothesis for now.
 
turns out my dad was in japan for a meeting right when this happened ><
 
Seems like there's been a meltdown in one of the reactors in a nuclear plant.

Not good.
 
DEATHMASTER said:
Would the tsunami be smaller? Since less water is displaced I would think.
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If the quake was closer to the surface then the wave is generally bigger because less energy is dissipated while traveling to the surface (like how something is louder the closer you are to it).
From what I can figure out this quake was caused by the Pacific plate dragging Japan downwards as the Pacific plate subducted (like someone hanging off a diving board). The quake itself was Japan popping back up a little bit. The tsunami was caused by the upwards movement of a piece of the ocean floor which lifted water above the level of that surrounding it. The raised water then fell back down causing a pressure wave to travel through the water around it (this is also how the wave moves so fast. The water dosen't move it just bumps into the water next to it).

Anyway thats all I can think of at the moment, I'll try to get some more info and might post here later.
PS. Probably should add that I'm a 4th year Geology student and I'm doing a project on the movement of plates so I though I would add what I've been able to figure out at the moment.

PSS. Found this map of the quakes occurring in Japan at the moment. You can see that they are mostly on the left of the blue line which shows the plate boundaries because they are the result of the right hand plate moving under the left hand one.
 
Just returned from Japan a week ago. Was travelling through that exact coastline on the last days I was there :/

Absolutely terrible :(
 
Did somebody say earthquake thread?! :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

What's the death toll? Quick, somebody give me the death toll!
 
Zephos said:
Just returned from Japan a week ago. Was travelling through that exact coastline on the last days I was there :/

Absolutely terrible :(
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Certainly glad you got out last week then man. You have a new lease on life.



Darkside55 said:
Did somebody say earthquake thread?! :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

What's the death toll? Quick, somebody give me the death toll!
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Shut up!
 
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