Phil Plait: No, The “Super-Moon” Didn’t Cause the Japanese Earthquake
Moon's Apogee and Perigee.
The ever lucid Phil Plait writes on Bad Astronomy:
Japan suffered a massive earthquake last night, measuring nearly magnitude 9. This is one of the largest quakes in its history, causing widespread and severe damage. Before I say anything else, I’m greatly saddened by the loss of life in Japan, and I’ll be donating to disaster relief organizations to help them get in there and do what they can to give aid to those in need.
While there isn’t much I can do to directly help the situation in Japan, I do hope I can help mitigate the panic and worry that can happen due to people blaming this earthquake on the so-called “supermoon” — a date when the Moon is especially close to the Earth at the same time it’s full. So let me be extremely clear:
Despite what a lot of people are saying, there is no way…
Haitians Mark One Year Anniversary Of Earthquake
The Haitian National Palace after the earthquake on January 12, 2010
A year after tragedy hit Haiti, survivors are marking the anniversary of the devastating earthquake. A year later and hundreds of thousands of people are living in shelters, communities are slowly being rebuilt and there is a constant battle against cholera. BBC News reports:
Haitians are preparing to mark the anniversary of the earthquake that devastated their country and left some 250,000 of their fellow citizens dead.
Church services are due to be held around the nation, including at the ruined cathedral in Port-au-Prince.
There will also be a minute’s silence at 4.53pm (2153 GMT) – the exact moment when the 7.0 magnitude quake hit.
Traffic stopped as the streets of Port-au-Prince turned quiet and businesses were closed.
People walked in solemn processions to prayer services marking the anniversary of the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history. Many people wore white, a colour associated with…
NZ Quake Creates New Faultline
The Earth is looking increasingly unstable — is this a sign of crustal displacement? From the Daily Mail:
The earthquake that devastated a city in New Zealand tore open a new 11ft faultine in the Earth’s surface.
The 7.1-magnitude quake which hit Christchurch, the country’s second-largest city, destroyed about 500 buildings and caused an estimated £930million of damage.
But hundreds of lives were saved by tough building rules, it was claimed. Only two injuries were reported.
The quake was caused by the continuing collision between the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates, said Professor Mark Quigley, of Canterbury University.
‘One side of the Earth has lurched to the right … up to 11ft and in some places been thrust up,’ he said. ‘We went and saw two houses that were completely snapped in half by the earthquake.’
The quake cut power across the region, roads were blocked by debris and gas and water supplies were disrupted…
[continues in…
Deepak Chopra Caused the Recent Mexicali Earthquake? Well, He Thinks He Did…
So is this guy joking or is he just an enormous dickhead? Deepak Chopra apologized for causing the 7.2-magnitude earthquake felt in parts of Mexico and the southwestern United States on April 4th…
An Ominous Drilling Sign for the Truth
The year is 2010 and to anyone not in denial, the industrialized nations have entered the greatest calamity the world has ever known:
- Iceland is history.
- Greece’s economy, much like the ancient Parthenon, is in ruin.
- 46 states could face bankruptcy in the United States.
So then, why is President Obama going back on his word and drilling holes in the earth?
The Interior Department under Barack Obama offered for sale more acres of dry-land drilling on public lands than the Bush Administration had at the same point in 2008.
An economy in a state of rigor mortis doesn’t need oil to lubricate an engine that blew up on October 29, 2008, and our way of life won’t come back if the oil industry creates a handful of jobs or we reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Drill, Drill, Drill didn’t make environmental sense in 1973 or 2008
In 1973, America’s solution to the Arab oil embargo and long gas lines…
Did Aliens From Friendship Island Warn Of The Chile Earthquake?
In January I visited Chile, luckily for me before the earthquakes. While there I was told a story about Friendship Island, a mythical island inhabited by strange beings off the southern coast of Chile (learn more here). Although famous amongst Chilean conspiracy buffs and ufologists, it is seldom discussed outside the region. I would have left it as an amusing piece of local lore, but recently the leading Chilean TV conspiracy theorist, Salfate, went on air in December 2009 claiming that beings from Friendship Island had told him there would be many earthquakes and tsunamis in 2010…
OK, it’s totally nutty stuff, but the natural disasters are hitting as predicted. What does anyone know about Salfate – is he credible or a crank?
Japanese Fish Predicts Earthquakes?
If it’s well known that animals have a heightened perception of developing weather patterns, this would be no exception, via motherboard.tv:
Japan is bracing itself for bad times after scores of the usually rare, giant Oarfish have washed ashore and been caught in coastal fisherman’s nets.The sightings started after the ‘quake in Chile and the 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Taiwan. The rash of tectonic shifting around the Pacific “Ring of Fire” is causing concern that Japan is next, and these gigantor fish aren’t helping.
The Oarfish is traditionally known as a messenger fish from the sea gods, and it’s tidings are usually grim. The fish can grow up to five metres in length and usually found at depths of 1, 000 ft. Long and slender with a dorsal fin that runs the length of it’s body, the fish resembles a kind of steam-rolled snake.
According to folklore, the fish will come ashore and…
Chilean Quake Likely Shifted Earth’s Axis, NASA Scientist Says
Alex Morales writes on Bloomberg:
The earthquake that killed more than 700 people in Chile on Feb. 27 probably shifted the Earth’s axis and shortened the day, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist said.
Earthquakes can involve shifting hundreds of kilometers of rock by several meters, changing the distribution of mass on the planet. This affects the Earth’s rotation, said Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who uses a computer model to calculate the effects.
“The length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second),” Gross, said today in an e-mailed reply to questions. “The axis about which the Earth’s mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches).”
The changes can be modeled, though they’re difficult to physically detect given their small size, Gross said. Some changes may be more obvious, and islands may…
Massive Earthquake In Chile Followed By Tsunami
Robin Henry reports for the Times:
A massive earthquake on the coast of Chile has killed at least 76 people, flattening buildings and triggering a tsunami.
The 8.8-magnitude quake, the country’s largest in 25 years, shook the capital Santiago for a minute and half at 3:34am (0634 GMT) today.
A tsunami warning has been extended across all Pacific islands and the Pacific rim, including most of Central and South America and as far as Australia and Antarctica.
The wave has already caused serious damage to the sparsely populated Juan Fernandez islands, off the Santiago coast, local radio reported. The quake hit near the town of Maule, 200 miles southwest of Santiago, at a depth of 22 miles underground.
The epicentre was just 70 miles from Concepcion, Chile’s second-largest city, where more than 200,000 people live along the Bio Bio river. In Santiago buildings collapsed and phone lines and electricity were brought down, but the full…
Disaster Profiteers See Dollar Signs In Haiti
In The Nation, Jeremy Scahill writes on how Blackwater-esque private security companies are chomping at the bit for huge paydays offering their ’services’ in the reshaping of Haiti:
We saw this type of Iraq-style disaster profiteering in New Orleans, and you can expect to see a lot more of this in Haiti over the coming days, weeks and months. Private security companies are seeing big dollar signs in Haiti thanks in no small part to the media hype about “looters.”
Among the services offered are: “High Threat terminations,” dealing with “worker unrest,” armed guards and “Armed Cargo Escorts.”
Haiti Earthquake: Orphans For Sale For $50
By Nick Allen in Haiti for the Telegraph:
Orphans in Haiti are being offered for sale to foreigners for as little as £30 amid warnings that up to one million children in the country have been left vulnerable to abuse and trafficking in the wake of the earthquake.
In a remote area north of Port-au-Prince, a man was reported to have offered to sell a young boy to a Canadian man for just $50.
The first confirmed case of a child being offered for sale since Haiti was devastated by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake on Jan 12 took place near Gonaives, 150km north of Port-au-Prince.
It was reported by Noel Ismonin, a Canadian pastor who rescues orphans in the area. A man offered to sell him the boy but the pastor refused.
Meanwhile, in camps around the capital there were several reports of men being lynched after being accused by earthquake victims of trying to…
Israel Makes Waves by Simulating an Earthquake
By Avraham Zuroff for Israel National News:
The
Seismologic Division of the Ministry of National Infrastructure’s Geophysical Institute will attempt to simulate an earthquake in the southern Negev on Thursday. The experiment, financed by the U.S. Defense Department, is a joint project with the University of Hawaii and is part of a scientific project intended to improve seismological and acoustic readings in Israel and its environs, up to a 1,000 km/621 mile radius.
The experiment intends to improve the understanding of sound waves in the atmosphere. Scientists will then be able to fine-tune Israel’s seismological equipment to give advance warning of earthquakes. Measurements will also be taken in other countries, including Cyprus, Greece, France, and Germany.
Israel will create a controlled explosion of 80 tons of explosive material, which will simulate the intensity of a tremor after an earthquake of Magnitude 3. Natural earthquakes of a similar intensity occur in the Middle East…
The Real Story About Relief in Haiti
From Collective Evolution:
Haiti was hit on January 12th 2010 with a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that caused a great deal of “devastation” to close to 3,000,000 of Haiti’s population.
Whether this earthquake was caused by the government using HAARP or whether it was a natural disaster is not the question here. If we look in the right places, away from the mass manipulating that’s going on, we will see what is actually going on in Haiti.
Disaster strikes and the first on the scene is the world police themselves, THE UNITED STATES. They jump in and take control of the airport in Haiti, supposedly assisting with aid. No aid here, only military with lots of guns to make sure those fallen concrete bricks don’t try to steal any of the food they are supplying. You are seeing what looks a lot more like a war than a natural disaster…
Yellowstone Hit By Swarm Of Earthquakes
By Howard Pankratz for the Denver Post:
Yellowstone National Park has been rattled by more than 250 earthquakes in the past two days following a period of 11 months of quiet seismic activity in the park.
The quakes have been gaining strength, with a 3.1 tremor recorded at 11:03 a.m. today. A 2.9 quake was recorded at 12:38 p.m.
Prof. Robert B. Smith, a geophysicist at the University of Utah and one of the leading experts on earthquake and volcanic activity at Yellowstone, said that the activity is a “notable swarm.”
“The swarm is located about 10 miles northwest of Old Faithful, Wyo., and nine miles southeast of West Yellowstone, Montana,” said Smith.
Jamie Farrell, a doctoral student in geophysics who works with Smith at the University of Utah, said that as of 3 p.m. today, 270 quakes have been recorded in the past two days.
Farrell said the quakes are occurring in an area about…
Danny Glover On Haiti: Dumb As Pat Robertson?
What is it with the disaster in Haiti? First outspoken conservative wingnut Pat Robertson states on air that Haiti is ‘Cursed by a Pact With The Devil’ and now leftie B-Movie star Danny Glover says “When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m sayin’?”
Who’s dumber, Robertson or Glover?
The Haiti Disaster and Superstition
Nick P. at Black Sun Gazette
The current disaster in Haiti is a tragedy of epic proportions. The cleanup, which will almost certainly never happen in any meaningful way, would take years if given the full weight of the world’s productive resources that it deserves…
A Real Life Lex Luthor? Switzerland Geologist on Trial for ‘Causing Quakes’
A real life Lex Luthor… Was it all a real estate scam to create “beachfront” property in this land-locked country? Let’s find out. BBC News reports:
The head of a geothermal energy company has gone on trial in Switzerland accused of damaging property by triggering earthquakes. Markus Haering’s company had been working with the authorities in Basel to try to convert the heat in deep-seated rocks into electricity.
But the project was suspended in 2006 when drilling triggered the quakes.
They caused no injuries but led to $9m (£5.54m) of damage. Mr Haering denies deliberately damaging property.
The project was shut down permanently last week after a government study found that similar quakes caused by the project would lead to millions of dollars worth of damage each year.
