The red star marks where the quake hit. CREDIT: USGS.
Posted on 04/12/2012 7:14:27 PM PDT by neverdem
The red star marks where the quake hit. CREDIT: USGS.
The magnitude 8.6 earthquake that struck in the Indian Ocean off the western coast of Sumatra today resurrected fears of a repeat of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami that proved one of the most devastating natural disasters in modern memory.
However, this earthquake, which struck at 2:38 p.m. local time (4:38 a.m. ET), about 270 miles (435 kilometers) off the coast of the Indonesian island was a different animal altogether than the 2004 earthquake and tsunami, which killed more than 230,000 people and left millions homeless.
"It was quite a bit smaller," said Julie Dutton, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey. The 2004 quake was a magnitude 9.1 — the third most powerful earthquake ever recorded.
Perhaps more significantly, today's earthquake was a different kind of quake all together. Instead of occurring at a plate boundary along an area called a subduction zone, where one tectonic plate is diving beneath another, this earthquake occurred in the middle of an oceanic plate, where the faults in the crust essentially moved from side to side instead of up and down. These sorts of events are called strike-slip earthquakes.
"With a strike-slip event you don't have the same potential hazard for a tsunami as you do with a subduction event because the plates are moving adjacent to each other," Dutton told OurAmazingPlanet.
Although they are sometimes produced by landslides on the seafloor, significant tsunamis are typically created by subduction earthquakes, when one massive oceanic plate suddenly lurches deeper beneath another plate, shoving up a huge section of the seafloor. That displacement of the ocean floor also displaces ocean water...
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
I wonder if that sideways movement queued or greased up the plates for a major vertical movement sooner rather then later.
Barack the Magnificent stopped the tsunami.
Paul Simon - Slip Sliding Away. I’m really glad there was little wave action. Is there a lot of quake activity, more than normal in that area. I know Indonesia and Japan are constantly shaking but recently . . .
beat me to it.
................Barack the Magnificent stopped the tsunami................
Actually it was in concert with Zer0’s god Mohammud!
I read in an earlier thread that fracking and oil drilling are causing these earthquakes - do you have a map showing the oil rigs that suck the stability out of that area?
I've read that too, but very mild quakes that are barely felt and usually rated in 2s and 3s. Some have said they're probably good because they relieve stress at the faults little by little instead of catastrophic quakes.
Right - I was being sarcastic and agree that the little ones are probably good in that they are relieving the stress at the fault lines....unfortunately - we will always have the enviromental wackos with us making up theories that suit their agenda and need to be fought every step of the way - I have begun to teach my kids the ridiculousness of these people so that they can carry the message to their friends, as well as fight the fight come the next generation.
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