What’s up? The Friday links (49)

A strong earthquake rattled Japan today and caused some intense shaking in the Fukushima region. The quake had a magnitude of 7.3 and occurred at a depth of ~30 km. A tsunami warning was issued immediately, but until now (11:30 CET) it looks like no waves were created.

EMSC moment tensor solutions (Source: http://static2.emsc.eu/Images/EVID/29/296/296231/296231.MT.jpg)

Great video of tsunami modelling

Oregon State University has published a nice video of their tsunami modelling results. Amazing how the wave hits the coast and spreads in the urban area!

Smartphones as seismometers

If you don’t have a smartphone yet, this news might convince you to buy one. BBC reports that there’s a plan to use the thousands of phones out there as seismometers (I remember to have heard about something like this some months (yeras?) ago, I guess).

Agile’s collection of gifts for geologists

The guys from Agile put together some really nerdy good ideas for Christmas gifts. This is a funny read and I can totally agree – a Geiger-Müller counter is the perfect gift for any geologist.

Great weather photography

This has nothing to do with earthquakes, it’s just about really beautiful clouds. Beautiful collection!

More great photos!

The Big Picture series from Boston is always worth a visit. In their recent collection of photos from the Russian river Yenisei they do not only show interesting aspects of everyday life, but also beautiful geology in the background!

What was the biggest Earth Science Story in 2012?

Earth magazine has set up a poll to find out what was the most struggling story for you. Curiosity is leading – but the poll is still open!

New paper on landslides related to the Haiti 2010 earthquake

Gorum et al. published their results on the connection between rupture mechanism, topography and mass movement patern:

Gorum, T., van Westen, C.J., Korup, O., van der Meijde, M., Fan, X., van der Meer, F.D., 2012. Complex rupture mechanism and topography control symmetry of masswasting
pattern, 2010 Haiti earthquake. Geomorphology, doi: 10.1016/j.geomorph.2012.11.027.

Mosaic – some nice joints in Tertiary sandstone in the Campo de Gibraltar area. Additional info for climbers – here you can climb “mosaic” (6c if I remeber correctly.)

Have a nice weekend!

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Christoph Grützner

Christoph Grützner

works at the Institute of Geological Sciences, Jena University. He likes Central Asia and the Mediterranean and looks for ancient earthquakes.

See all posts Christoph Grützner

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