Picture / Reuters, Royal Navy
Posted on 02/10/2005 4:15:37 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
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by STEVE CONNOR
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| A 3-dimensional computer-generated graphic shows the seabed in the vicinity of the recent earthquake in South Asia. Picture / Reuters, Royal Navy |
A 3-dimensional computer-generated graphic shows the seabed in the vicinity of the recent earthquake in South Asia. Picture / Reuters, Royal Navy
INDONESIA (9 Feb 2005) -- The first underwater images of the seabed off Indonesia where an earthquake struck on Boxing Day show the colossal scale of the geological forces that sent a devastating tsunami across the Indian Ocean.
Three-dimensional pictures taken by a sonar on the Royal Navy vessel HMS Scott reveal a ruptured sea floor of submarine canyons and mountains created by the movement of one tectonic plate beneath another at the rate of 6cm a year.
It was the sudden release of pressure built up over decades of tectonic movement that triggered the earthquake, which some geologists have re-evaluated as three times more powerful than previously thought.
Images released yesterday by the Navy show how the flat Indian tectonic plate (shown in blue) is slipping under or "subducted" beneath the crumpled Burma plate (shown in green and yellow), which is being pushed up in the process.
Data from the sonar is being analysed by the marine geologists Lisa McNeill and Tim Henstock, of the Southampton Oceanography Centre. It is the first time the sea floor has been studied so intensely after such a large earthquake.
Dr Henstock said: "There are features which we would think are something like the Grand Canyon would look. You can see huge piles of mud maybe a few hundred metres thick; there's a lot of evidence of activity at the subduction zone."
The scientists estimate some of the ridges are up to 1500m high Some of the ridges have collapsed to produce huge landslides of mud and rock several kilometres long. Seismologists have calculated that the epicentre of the earthquake was some 40km below the sea floor.
They initially registered it as 9.0 on the Richter scale. But, seismologists from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois have recalculated the earthquake as 9.3, which would make it three times larger - because the scale is logarithmic - and the second-largest recorded earthquake.
Seth Stein, who reanalysed the seismograms, said: "The rupture zone was much larger than previously thought. The initial calculations that it was a 9.0 earthquake did not take into account what we call slow slip, where the fault, delineated by aftershocks, shifted more slowly."
It was the forces generated by the quake that lifted huge volumes of water to generate the tsunami, Dr Stein said.
"The additional energy released by the slow slip along the 745-mile (1200km) long fault played a key role in generating the tsunami."
Dave Long of the British Geological Survey, said an early-warning system in the Indian Ocean would give better protection against a tsunami caused by an earthquake.
"A tsunami warning system simply tells you the earthquake had happened and that a tsunami is going to come through later. The advantage of this sort of information is that we can model in advance, if we have a certain type of earthquake, what might happen."
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| Commander Steve Malcolm of the HMS Scott is seen in silhouette as he conducts a news conference at the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office in Taunton, Somerset, England, Wednesday Feb. 9, 2005, in front of a 3-dimensional model of the earthquake epicenter seabed. Research vessel HMS Scott was assigned to undertake a survey of the Indian Ocean disaster earthquake epicentre in order to further the understanding of earthquakes and assist prediction of such events in the future. Digital images taken by a British military ship show the rumpled seabed at the epicenter of the huge Indian Ocean earthquake that caused the Asian tsunami. The pictures, which went on display Wednesday, were taken by the Royal Navy's survey ship HMS Scott. They clearly depict the line along which the Indian tectonic plate suddenly collided with and pushed underneath the Burman plate on Dec. 26, triggering the world's biggest earthquake in 40 years. (AP Photo/PA, Chris Ison) |
Ping!
You mean they were part of God's miracle. In that case, can he make one now over China in 10 seconds?
LOL!
You are absolutely correct!!! The plates are moving several centimeters a year - that's fast in geologic terms! Say 3 cm/year - 30 cm/10 years - 3000 cm/1000 years - 3000000 cm (3000 meters!!!)/1,000,000 years... back to 4.6+ BILLION years ago. That's hauling a**!
--Boot Hill
John A. Eddy (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and High Altitude Observatory in Boulder) and Aram A. Boomazian (a mathematician with S. Ross Co. in Boston) have found evidence that the sun has been contracting about 0.1% per century, corresponding to a shrinkage rate of about 5 feet/hour. The data examined spanned a 400-year period of solar observation, so that this shrinkage of the sun, though small, is apparently continual. If the sun was larger in the past than it is now by 0.1% per century, a creationist, who may believe that the world was created approximately six thousand years ago, has very little to worry about: the sun would have been only 6% larger at creation than it is now. However, if the rate of change of the solar radius remained constant, 100 thousand years ago the sun would have been twice the size it is now, and it is hard to imagine that any life could exist under such altered conditions. Yet 100 thousand years is a minuscule amount of time when dealing with traditional evolutionary time scales. Furthermore, assuming (by uniformitarian-type reasoning) that the rate of shrinkage has not changed with time, then the surface of the sun would have touched the surface of the earth at a time in the past equal to approximately 20 million B.C. And, since the time scales commonly assumed for organic evolution range from 500 million years to 2,000 million years, it would appear especially amazing since all of the evolutionary development, except the last 20 million years, took place on a planet that was inside the sun!
Why, when I came, was there no man? When I called, was there no one to answer? Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver? Behold, by my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a desert; their fish stink for lack of water, and die of thirst.
Yeah, but what's that in furlongs per fortnight?
--Boot Hill
Say it loud and say it often. That picture tells a story. A very ABRUPT story. If abruptness is good enough for "punctuated evolution", why should it not be good enough when there is ACTUAL EVIDENCE (for crying out loud)?
They do not know whether Sun was shrinking or expanding tens of millions of years ago. They do know it is shrinking in recent years at a rate of 0.1% a year.
What if Sun is undergoing both shrinking and expanding as a long-term phenomenon? If that is all God's people can do, I have to wonder why God made them so petty.
We can measure them all moving yearly with GPS.
So, who is the liar, you or GPS?
I know where I'd put my money.
The plates are moving around slowly, building up pressure in some places, relieving pressure in others. When a certain area has taken all the pressure it can, it gives, causing a sudden release in the form of an earthquake. It's an adjustment in an ongoing process, and a pretty amazing process at that.
And, I suppose you will also shout that this photo is just some evolutionist's fabrication, too.
Those are not stars, bud -- they are huge galaxies, like the one you see as the "Milky Way" on a dark night.
Go back to your "primitive religion" threads -- and quit bothering us believers who are -- at least -- trying to comprehed the majesty of creation -- not denying it, just to cling to some stone-age, imbecilic interpretation of the Word.
Isn't a change from 9.0 to 9.3 double not triple?
(Log 2 = 0.3010)
(3cm= 0.0001491290861 furlong)
(1yr = 26.07142857 fortnight) That's an approximate, of course.
You are right.
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