7.4-Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Off Japan; Tsunami Alert Issued 313
There is breaking news that a 7.4 Magnitude Quake has hit off the coast of Japan, and a Tsuanmi warning has been made. Please post updates in the comments.
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To be a kind of moral Unix, he touched the hem of Nature's shift. -- Shelley
Fastest slashdot story ever! (Score:5, Informative)
I am still dizzy from the shake (living in yokohama), plenty of blurry images right now in http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/ [nhk.or.jp]
Re:Fastest slashdot story ever! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Fastest slashdot story ever! (Score:5, Interesting)
This one lasted a good 2 minutes, steady shake once it got going. Trying to get back to sleep here in Chiba Prefecture.
Re:Fastest slashdot story ever! (Score:5, Informative)
No injuries reported, according to NHK. This was in the vicinity of the 9.0 quake, 40 km below the sea bed off Sendai.
Re:Fastest slashdot story ever! (Score:4, Funny)
You're right, this is fast. At first I just though it was a dupe from a few weeks ago.
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live in a tall-ish building, the quake was over 3-shindo, was playing halo... yeah...
Re:Fastest slashdot story ever! (Score:4, Informative)
For ref, 'cos I was wondering, "shindo" [wikipedia.org] is a japanese earthquake scale, not directly comparable to the richter [wikipedia.org] scale (or the "moment magnitude" [wikipedia.org] scale often mislabelled as richter in the media) - shindo is for various points on the earth's surface, richter for overall energy of quake.
Re:Fastest slashdot story ever! (Score:4, Informative)
Off-topic, but what's up with Slashdot links and FF4? Tried to go look at the images and the link didn't work. Had to copy & paste.
I've been having the same problem. Found it works to double-right-click (to open the context menu; single right click doesn't seem to work) and select "open in new tab", but pretty ridiculous. Even worse than before, when control-clicking to open a link in a new window just expand parent threads, often causing you to have to hunt all over the place to find the comment you were reading.
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Middle mouse click not working in Chrome either.
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2m high tsunami (Score:5, Informative)
According to the Japanese Meteorological Agency the tsunami is about 2m high. Coastal defences should be okay in most places but obviously anyone near the coast should retreat inland if possible.
Re:2m high tsunami (Score:5, Funny)
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7.4 versus 9.0 (Score:2)
the richter scale is logarithmic so a 9 is something like 30 times larger in energy than a 7.4. On the other hand the march quake was initially rated as a 7.1 scale quake then updated later to 9.
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On the Richter Scale each whole number represents an order of magnitude difference in energy, so a 9 is 100 times more powerful than a 7.
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"so a 9 is 100 times more powerful than a 7"
Yes, but a 9 is only about 30x more powerful than a 7.4, as the parent stated.
Actually it's closer to 40: 10^(9-7.4) = 39.8
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A 9 releases 1000 times the energy of a 7:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_magnitude_scale#Definition [wikipedia.org]
And a 9 is about 250 times more powerful than a 7.4 (there is a factor of 1.5 in the exponent that "it's just a logarithmic scale" misses).
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Re:7.4 versus 9.0 (Score:5, Informative)
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If you pass this on to 100 emergency personnel in the next 5 minutes, you will meet your true love tomorrow! If you don't, 3 of my friends will drown!
Sort of status I'd delete within reading the first 7 words, and block that person's updates from being on my homepage!
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So I guess we should thank Mark Zuckerberg for cutting out the deadwood.
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Additional: only in Miyagi, elsewhere the tsunami is approx 0.5m. Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant should not be affected by the wave, although obviously there is still the quake to worry about...
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"Coastal defences should be okay in most places but obviously anyone near the coast should retreat inland if possible."
Anyone whose home is near the coast should consider moving permanently out of range. There will be more tsunamis, so planning should reflect that.
Put residential areas inland, and more expendable construction at the coast.
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trains (Score:2)
Re:trains (Score:5, Interesting)
FWIW I was riding on the shinkansen(headed to Germany for a bit since I didn't have water and food at my place
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Wow! I know Europe and Japan have great trains systems, but Shizuoka to Germany on a bullet train, amazing!
Yeah, I hear they have transdimensional portals. Not cheap, but still cheaper than train travel in the UK, where we only lead the world in informing passengers which lines are delayed/closed...
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Yeah, I hear they have transdimensional portals. Not cheap, but still cheaper than train travel in the UK, where we only lead the world in informing passengers which lines are delayed/closed...
This is true, but informing passengers is essential. On my two last trips to Berlin I spent half an hour waiting at different stations before realising the line wasn't running. Deciphering the timetable in Brussels was also a challenge -- you had to know the destination of the train you needed, even if you were travelling to a minor station along the way.
(Credit where it's due though: UK trains are expensive (unless booked in advance), but service is very frequent compared even to France and Germany, e.g.
Re:trains (Score:4, Funny)
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They get up enough speed to jump the Sea of Japan.
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The main Tokyo lines are running almost 4 minutes late!!
7.4 != 9.2 Not even close. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:7.4 != 9.2 Not even close. (Score:5, Informative)
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Not moderate. (Score:3)
7.4 is a major earthquake. That's about the size of the 1996 Kobe Earthquake, larger than the 1986 Loma Prieta quake. Even by Japanese standards it's large.
It's likely to have mild effects only because it occurred far offshore, not because 7.4 is small.
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Exactly. "Moderate" is a factor of 2 things - who's talking (Japanese laugh of 5s, while the 5.6 Newcastle quake was the most devastating earthquake in Australian history - it killed 13 people) and how far away you are (a deep earthquake 100 miles away is usually safe, but a 3.0 can kill you if you are in a mineshaft, close to the hypercenter).
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If they're using a logarithmic scale, there must be a reason why the logarithmic scale makes more sense. Maybe it's because the damage or perceived power scales logarithmically with the energy of the quake?
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It's probably some sort of polynomial relation - energy being converted into motion of land mass in 3D, causing both horizontal and vertical motion, and the actual damage being related in some other polynomial way to the intensity of the shaking (complex, because you get shear forces in the horizontal combined with tensile and compressive forces in the vertical, and building materials act very differently under shear/compression/tension). And of course not to mention the fact that the damage is greatly depe
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I've been meaning to ask this for a while: is this somehow deduced at the epicentre or does it reflect the level of damage / energy transferred / work done over some wider area?
Is a 7.4 in one city likely to cause the same problems as a 7.4 in another? (Say one on clay and one on basalt?)
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This figure reflects pretty much measures the energy released during the event.
For effects, you want to use the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale - which is a closed scale - ranging from 0 (not felt) to 10 (everything leveled).
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Re:7.4 != 9.2 Not even close. (Score:5, Funny)
The Arena quake was 3.0
Also in Mexico (Score:4, Informative)
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oh wait . . .
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Goddamn you, Lex Luthor!
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Actually there were two 7.4 within a minute (Score:3, Informative)
14:32:41 & 14:32:00
about 100km apart (caveat not so good at spherical trig in head calculations)
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Maps/region/Asia_eqs.php [usgs.gov]
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One of them 4.7
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Oh they reclassified one of them. Makes sense.
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actually they took the 14:32:00 out... hmmm... something is fishy.
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tsunami warning URL (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.jma.go.jp/en/tsunami/ [jma.go.jp]
"Occurred at 23:32 JST 07 Apr 2011
Region name Miyagi-ken Oki
Depth about 40 km
Magnitude 7.4"
Article on MercuryNews.com (Score:5, Informative)
Article: Magnitude 7.4 earthquake hits off Japan coast [mercurynews.com]
Some quotes: "Officials say Thursday's quake was a 7.4-magnitude and hit 25 miles (40 kilometers) under the water and off the coast of Miyagi prefecture." "Buildings as far away as Tokyo shook for about a minute." "The Japan meteorological agency issued a tsunami warning for a wave of up to one meter." "Hundreds of aftershocks have shaken the northeast region devastated by the March 11 earthquake, but few have been stronger than 7.0."
Earth-Pissed Japanese in Space (Score:2, Interesting)
It's the psychological damage from repeated quakes that'll be the worse. Gaia's just rubbing salt in the japanese open flesh wound, over and over. If I'd be japanese, I'd be quite cross at this fucking planet. Cue in massive JAXA funding for moonbase in 3, 2, 1...
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Maybe someone from the future is trying to sink the island before they start turning out robot armies.
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Or more likely, completely destroy the oceanic ecosystem. [google.com]
While tragic, the disasters in Japan have brought a small yet direly needed reprieve from Japan's massive and completely disproportionate over fishing of the seas.
Japan Meteorological Agency Website... (Score:5, Informative)
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Map with local magnitudes (on the Japanese "shindo" scale):
http://tenki.jp/earthquake/detail-4575.html [tenki.jp]
Tenki.jp was my go-to site during the last quake. It shows quakes and tsunami warnings, updated almost instantly.
What's the worst that could happen? (Score:2)
I mean, it's just a little wave. It's not like a full on nuclear disaster.
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I mean, it's just a little wave. It's not like a full on nuclear disaster.
And the "nuclear disaster" pales into triviality compared to the tsunami that caused it, despite the media obsession. ... you were being ironic. Sorry.
Oh,
the US West Coast is next (Score:5, Insightful)
it's long overdue
could take a month, could take a decade, but if you live on the US West Coast and you have not prepared for the big one, now is the time
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Imagine all the stress that are building up on San Andreas fault as a result of the quakes across the pacific.
A mag-10 quake could be possible on the west coast.
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The fault near Oregon [registerguard.com] has caused quakes at least as bad as what Japan just had in the past.
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More at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. Summary: Can easily go over 9.0 from N. California to BC. If that happens, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver would be severely damaged.
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IIRC, the West coast is on the other side of the same plate system as the points in Japan that have been having these quakes. I'm not sure if this works for or against it -I'm not a seismologist- but it does seem to be cause for concern.
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Overdue? Sounds like gambler's fallacy to me.
it IS a logical fallacy (Score:2)
it's also a useful figure of speech
we are standing at the intersection of science and psychology here. you tell me which is more persuasive with the general public. so i say "overdue", in complete udnerstanding of why that word is not accurate, and i do so with a clean mind. i am trying to motivate people, and science won't do that. psychology will
of course, you have to worry about boy-who-cried-wolf effects:
http://volcanism.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/londons-overdue-killer-quake-a-case-study-in-media-sensati [wordpress.com]
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Agreed.
I think it's just as valid to say that Japan's earthquakes are a paid cost that the rest of the world no longer has to absorb by having earthquakes in their region. Japan takes one for the team so to say. But I'm talking out of my ass.
If there were any real models that measured likelihood of an earthquake in region X with any degree of reliability, I'd have a fucking widget for in on my phone. "The weather is 64 degrees, 10% chance of rain, and 1e-5% chance for a 6.0 magnitude or larger earthquake."
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Not really. The pressure an earthquake relieves is extremely local. The plates are huge and a very small (relative to the plate) change results in a huge earthquake.
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COME BACK TO K5 WE MISS YOU
i miss k5 too (Score:3)
the problem is the low iq racist morons
you find those on any site, but as time went on, they tended to represent a larger and larger piece of the k5 pie (which makes sense, because they were driving anyone not a low iq racist moron away)
k5 is a failed experiment, because it shows you can't let the inmates run the prison. you actually need to shoot a certain loud ignorant few of them in the head to keep things in order (i am advocating termination of account, not actual real life murder... i know you know i
Really? BBC Twitter as your source? (Score:5, Informative)
The USGS is like a million times better.
Here's the link: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/usc0002ksa.php [usgs.gov]
and here's the Tsunami info:
http://ptwc.weather.gov/ptwc/text.php?id=pacific.2011.04.07.143955 [weather.gov]
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But it's a logarithmic scale, so it's really only about 4 times better.
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It'll take a while for the scientists to agree on what it was. In the meantime, changing anything would be premature.
A Twitter feed? (Score:2)
Seriously? Twitter is not news. Link an actual new site ffs. Thanks.
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In the UK, this is rapidly becoming the other way around. I look at newspapers and then dig around on Twitter to find out what's really happening, without the Murdoch-filter and egregious violations of NPOV.
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It is the BBC's twitter feed. They hadn't written the article at that point, but they have now, and you can find it here. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13005110 [bbc.co.uk]
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No one else had reported it yet.
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Here. Happy now?
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/usc0002ksa.php [usgs.gov]
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And why isn't it? The media format is not what drive the quality of the news, it's the source. A BBC twitter feed announcing that their was an earthquake is a really solid source.
AND it's a great way for people to get the initial information.
You peoples blind hatred of twitter is beneath you and making you look like a Luddite . Twitter is a tool. Nothing more.
Yeah, I was waiting for this (Score:2)
There's bound to be some semi-major quakes in the near future as well... I've been saying they need to do something to get that nuclear material away from Fukushima rather soon. Another tsunami hitting it probably wouldn't end well.
Cluster-Fukushima (Score:4, Funny)
Just trying to coin a new term.
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In that I would say you wcrowe'd that one up...
To: Mother Nature (Score:2)
expected (Score:2)
The way the previous earthquake happened put more stress on the PAC / PHS /NAM plates.
There where already scientists watching the Plates of Tokyo prior to the 9.0
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not funny
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i have no problem imaging Stevists in a circlejerk
Eww.
Funny? Not really. Ironic? Maybe. True? Definitely (Score:2, Insightful)
Note the lame post-facto "sorta apology" to the readers.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/how-will-japan-earthquake-affect-apples-ipad-supply-chain/9763 [zdnet.com]
Authorâ(TM)s Note: A number of readers have complained that this article is insensitive to the pain and suffering of the Japanese people. Please accept my sincere apology. I have friends and former colleagues in Japan and I offered them my prayers for their safety and recovery last night. I have been to Japan and have a respect for its traditions and people. The devastation from the quake is terrible.
At the same time, my editorial mission here is to look at Apple, its products and markets. If that appears callous, I ask your forbearance. Some of the comments in the story were made several months ago, so please keep that context in mind.
http://www.businessinsider.com/gene-munster-apple-supply-demand-2011-3 [businessinsider.com]
Apple's supply chain is likely temporarily going to be affected by the Japan earthquake and tsunami, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster writes today, but demand for Apple products is stronger than ever, he says, and that should ultimately drive shares higher.
Hilarious phrasing here, "not much impact - more worried about the impact in the next quarter":
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12782566 [bbc.co.uk]
"In the short term, there won't be much impact," said chief executive Yang Yuanqing of Lenovo. "We are more worried about the impact in the next quarter."
No shit? Employee absences common?
http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=774&doc_id=205416&f_src=internetevolution_gnews [internetevolution.com]
Getting raw materials supplied and distributed remains a challenge in Japan. Disruptions to the country's transportation systems have made employee absences common. Interruptions in Japan's electricity supply have hindered maintenance of sensitive processes such as semiconductor lithography. Because of the setbacks, Apple delayed iPad2 shipments by one week from the original March 25 launch to allow it to catch up with production, given the shortfall in Japan-sourced parts.
But d
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While at some level I understand your thoughts on this, I think there is a serious amount of hate and anger stored up in there somewhere. You should at least attempt to evaluate yourself a bit if not simply get some professional help. On my life of "first thoughts" Apple's supply chain doesn't even make the top 20 thoughts or concerns.
But since I bring that up...
My top "first thoughts" on the subject are (in no particular order of importance)
1. What?! Again!? Crap!!!
2. I'm glad I don't have or know anyo
Re:l2type (Score:4, Funny)
hey, you try typing on a shaking keyboard!
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The Shinnosuke arc rocked, but are you sure many people are going to get this?