Earthquake & tsunami hits Japan

[kinboshi]

Apparently this was the 6th largest earthquake recorded since monitoring began around 1900.   Thousands of times more energy than the one that hit New Zealand recently, that one was so damaging because the epicentre was right on a city.

[outragous76]

nothing tilts me more than rolling death toll counts

"36 dead"

it will be 1000's by this time tomorrow - so what is news worthy of reporting 36 dead?  - false hope imo

[kinboshi]

Unbelievable pictures. 

Small earthquakes are frightening enough, something like this must be bloody terrifying.

[Waz1892]

Nuclear Plant  in Northeast Japan on fire!! - And they're saying they can't pump water to cool the reactor down!

[pokerfan]

Papua New Guinea 11:30am  , Solomon Islands 12:30 , Samoa 14:50 , Cook Islands 15:00 , Australia 15:30 , New Zealand 17:30 . Tsunami e.t.a  just given on Sky news.

(Our time obv)

[Cf]

Just saw an image of where the epicentre was. Quite a bit off the coast but it still did all that damage. Just imagine if it was further west... could have been strong enough to take out half the country?

[kinboshi]

Nuclear Plant  in Northeast Japan on fire!! - And they're saying they can't pump water to cool the reactor down!

That's why they shut the reactors down when there's an earthquake of significant force, so they don't need ongoing cooling.

There are four nuclear power stations on the East coast of Japan, and quite a few other nuclear-processing plants, etc. in that area.  You'd hope that they're all safe.

[Longines]

I was talking to a colleague in Tokyo over Skype about an hour ago and I can hear a scraping noise in the background.

"That's my desk moving"....

The aftershocks are pretty bad. All public transport is suspended in Tokyo - they're spending Friday night in the office.

[Longines]

Deadliest earthquakes from recent times (taken from BBC site):

26 Dec 2004, Sumatra, Indonesia: 9.1 quake and tsunami kills 227,898 across Pacific region
12 Jan 2010, Haiti: 222,570 killed, 7.0
12 May 2008, Sichuan, China: 87,587 killed, 7.9
8 Oct 2005, Pakistan: 80,361 killed, 7.6
20 June 1990, Manjil, Iran: 40,000 killed, 7.4
26 Dec 2003, Bam, Iran: 31,000 killed, 6.6
16 Jan 2001, Gujurat, India: 20,023 killed, 7.7
17 Aug 1999, Izmit, Turkey: 17,118 killed, 7.6
30 Sep 1993 Latur, India: 9,748 killed, 6.2
16 Jan 1995, Kobe, Japan: 5,530 dead, 6.9

The Richter scale is not linear though. An 8.0 releases 31 times more energy that a 7.0 and 1000 times more than than a 6.0. Look at the strengths quoted above - and this was an *8.9*.

[TightEnd]

the tsunami reaches Sendai airport

[TRIP5]

Just awful. Really puts everything into perspective...

We can only the other countries can evacuate the coast in time

xx

[kinboshi]

Deadliest earthquakes from recent times (taken from BBC site):

26 Dec 2004, Sumatra, Indonesia: 9.1 quake and tsunami kills 227,898 across Pacific region
12 Jan 2010, Haiti: 222,570 killed, 7.0
12 May 2008, Sichuan, China: 87,587 killed, 7.9
8 Oct 2005, Pakistan: 80,361 killed, 7.6
20 June 1990, Manjil, Iran: 40,000 killed, 7.4
26 Dec 2003, Bam, Iran: 31,000 killed, 6.6
16 Jan 2001, Gujurat, India: 20,023 killed, 7.7
17 Aug 1999, Izmit, Turkey: 17,118 killed, 7.6
30 Sep 1993 Latur, India: 9,748 killed, 6.2
16 Jan 1995, Kobe, Japan: 5,530 dead, 6.9

The Richter scale is not linear though. An 8.0 releases 31 times more energy that a 7.0 and 1000 times more than than a 6.0. Look at the strengths quoted above - and this was an *8.9*.

Yes, the logarithmic scale hides the differences in magnitude at first glance.  I think they've said that this earthquake was 8,000 times more powerful than the one that hit New Zealand.  Of course there are other factors that determine the damage they cause - such as where the epicentre is and how deep the earthquake is, etc.

Very scary.

[Woodsey]

Deadliest earthquakes from recent times (taken from BBC site):

26 Dec 2004, Sumatra, Indonesia: 9.1 quake and tsunami kills 227,898 across Pacific region
12 Jan 2010, Haiti: 222,570 killed, 7.0
12 May 2008, Sichuan, China: 87,587 killed, 7.9
8 Oct 2005, Pakistan: 80,361 killed, 7.6
20 June 1990, Manjil, Iran: 40,000 killed, 7.4
26 Dec 2003, Bam, Iran: 31,000 killed, 6.6
16 Jan 2001, Gujurat, India: 20,023 killed, 7.7
17 Aug 1999, Izmit, Turkey: 17,118 killed, 7.6
30 Sep 1993 Latur, India: 9,748 killed, 6.2
16 Jan 1995, Kobe, Japan: 5,530 dead, 6.9

The Richter scale is not linear though. An 8.0 releases 31 times more energy that a 7.0 and 1000 times more than than a 6.0. Look at the strengths quoted above - and this was an *8.9*.

I though each point up the scale was 10 x more energy than the last? ie 7.0 is 10x more than 6.0 and 8.0 is 10x more than 7.0 and so on and so forth? At least I thought that's what they taught me at uni?

[gatso]

I always thought the same woodsey. seems the 10x is shaking amplitude, 31x is energy release. assume that's because amplitude is in a straight line and the energy goes in all directions or something like that so what's felt is only 10x even though it's much more powerful but I could be talking bollocks

[Longines]

Wiki says 10x horizontal amplitude, not energy.