Posts in the category »   «  ( 91 Posts )

Dear fellows,

please stop littering the beaches all over the world. Seriously. I like beaches and I guess so do you, so please, take your trash with you. Last week I’ve been to Oman and worked in the Al Sawadi area, where you have a great coast line (which will be spoiled by a huge hotel-apartment-something complex, soon). The only thing was, you almost couldn’t see the sand because it was covered with oil cans, plastic bags, bottles, tires, more oil cans, buckets, toilets (!), packaging shit, cups, and oil cans. Please, stop that.

more

Recently, scientists from Switzerland came up with the news that fractured bedrock might amplify earthquake shaking. The say they observed an increase by factor 10, which seems huge. I knew amplifying by sediment basins, but this is new to me.

100 years ago on 6 January, Alfred Wegener presented his continental drift theory for the first time. The Blogosphere was full with articles, among them: more

A small comfort for all those who have missed the AGU2011 fall meeting (and so did I) might be that some sessions are now available on video for free. The AGU session on demand page has lots of videos, among them four sessions on the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. So if you’re ready for ~8 hrs of earthquake talks, you should definitely have a look.

more

It seems like everyone is at the AGU currently, and even the German media is full of geoscience news. The first really interesting thing that I came across was that hurricanes might trigger strong earthquakes. If Shimon Wdowinski from University of Miami is right, this would be a huge step forward for our earthquake understanding. If he should be right.

more

Goto et al. published a short paper on the Japan 2011 tsunami and implications for paleotsunami research in Marine Geology: Goto, K., Chagué-Goff, C., Fujino, S., Goff, J., Jaffe, B., Nishimura, Y., Richmond, B., Sugawara, D., Szczuciński, W., Tappin, D.R., Witter, R.C., Yulianto, E., 2011: New insights of tsunami hazard from the 2011 Tohoku-oki event. Marine Geology, 290, 1-4, 46-50.

more

Let’s start with some good news: The first two Galileo satellites (Natalia and Thijs) will be launched today from Kourou. It’s a little behind the schedule (6 years) and the entire project has become a little more expensive than previously thought (1,600,000,000 €), but who cares? It will provide 1 m GPS resolution! 1 m!!!

There is one more Archaeopteryx! Really! Soemone who does not want his name to be told handed out the fossil to scientists. After a thoroughly investigation of that great piece of Solnhofen Plattenkalk, the anonymous collector will get back his bird. No, his dinosaur I mean. Ehm, his Archaeopteryx.

Dave Petley reported on a giant landslide in Iceland. It’s expected to have ~1,000,000 m³. See the amazing images, just great.

more

Some good articles came up last week, and two interesting things happened in northwestern Europe. A small earthquake (M2.7-M3.4) hit northern Netherlands in the Groningen area and people claimed light house damages despite the low magnitude. The event was caused by natural gas production. The gas company, Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM), even has an online-formular for that! more

I am not sure if the geoscience community has realized that astronomy made three steps forward recently, so I’ll start out of topic. Three major astronomical problems have been solved! Really! more

Today’s Friday links concentrate on tsunamis. Recently, Pure and Applied Geophysics came up with quite a lot of tsunami papers, and I am sure that this decision was made before the Japan tsunami happened. Some papers fur sure are interesting for analysing past tsunamis and earthquake environmental effects.

more

A strong aftershock has rocked Japan on 11 April. USGS reported a magnitude of 6.7, while EMSC estimated M6.6. A tsunami warning has been released by the Japan Meteorological Agency for the eastern coast of Japan’s Honshu Island. UPDATE 13:06 MEST: The Tsunami warning has been cancelled. more