pslewis

Just heard that the earth rocked 1inch off its axis due to the earthquake!

The earth really DID move!

Pete

hawkthescoobslayer

it did indeed pete an now every day is 3 millionths of a second shorter aswell!!!

fast bloke

wouldn't worry too much - the moon will get it back on track in another 50 million years or so

(Did you know the earth wobbles on is axis anyway, and we lose a season every 6500 years?? )

Chip

So they know the earth moved by 1" but couldnt predict the worlds biggest earthquake for 40 years. Arent they clever people these seismologists.

Or are they just talking complete Bollox.

Chip

Leslie

What I would like to know is, how did they measure that?

PSL, you are a nuclear scientist, can you tell us?

Les

blueone

I'll repeat what I said on another thread which seems to of vanished It was Bush that caused it by looking for Oil!

pslewis

Has anyone else thought that it was an Indian Underground Nuclear Test that went wrong??

Just thinking out loud!

Pete

ajm

I thought destroying archipelagos and costal geologial structures was more the folly of the French!

Bubba po

Earthquakes are inherently unpredictable because they are caused by instantaneous failure fractures of a highly-stressed, inelastic material: namely, the earth's crust. Could you predict when a breadstick was going to break if you had no idea what bending stress was being put upon it or where the weakest point in its inhomogeneous structure was?

Steve vRS

No, but if I rigged it up with a few strain gauges and tested an exact copy to discover it's UTS I could

Steve

Chip

So why do wqe have all these so called Seismologists then who claim to be able to predict earthquakes.?

Chip

DEEDEE

It was also said that the Countries close by, -- moved 65 foot, -- and that means the world map is out of date and needs rewriting

ajm

Because they have the expertise to pick up and interpret signs generated by plate tectonics. Those signs may be physical vibrations building over a period of time, or they could be instantaneous, i.e. they may be present or not, and the warning time could be years, months or seconds!

If you have a plate made out of billions of tonnes of rock, laid its edge over another plate of billions of tonnes of rock and then tried to slide one under the other you would find that you would have to keep on increasing the force until it moved. Now, depending on the nature of the surfaces between the two plates it may start to gradually shift under relatively light force thereby giving notice of impending movement, or it may remain motionless until it moves suddenly and without warning as Bubba has already eloquently explained.

Neil Smalley

So, we only have 26,000 years left (cus there will be no seasons) or the earth is <6500 years old because we don't have 5 seasons..

mad_dr

So that's what happened to last summer!

Brit_in_Japan

It's too difficult to predict earthquakes that accurately. Where I live in Japan they say there is an 80% certainty there will be a magnitude 8 earthquake within the next 30 years, but they can't be more accurate than that right now.

For the last big quake in Niigata they were able to detect the initial shocks and cut the power to the shinkansen (bullet train) and slow it down before thr main quake hit. But we're talking about just a handful of seconds notice, not enough to allow an evacuation.

Drunken Bungle Whore

Without wishing to sound callous in any way - like everyone else I'm staggered and very moved by the scale of the human tragedy - but does anyone know of a site that has any of the geological findings from the quake? New Scientist still seem to be on their chrissy break - and the newspapers only seem to carry the merest basics of scientific info.


Cheers

Drunken Bungle Whore

It's OK - was being a muppet - the British Geological Survey website:


http://www.earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/latest_info.htm

scooby-si

the earth moves every night for my wife so nothing new there

thundertiger

you have rocked further in your chair pete, i'm sure...

BB