Oarfish Washing Ashore May Portend Earthquake in Japan

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Japan is bracing itself after dozens of rare giant oarfish traditionally the harbinger of a powerful earthquake have been washed ashore or caught in fishermen’s nets.

This rash of tectonic movements around the Pacific “Rim of Fire” is heightening concern that Japan – the most earthquake-prone country in the world – is next in line for a major earthquake.

Those concerns have been stoked by the unexplained appearance of a fish that is known traditionally as the Messenger from the Sea God’s Palace.

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In recent weeks, 10 specimens have been found either washed ashore or in fishing nets off Ishikawa Prefecture, half-a-dozen have been caught in nets off Toyama Prefecture and others have been reported in Kyoto, Shimane and Nagasaki prefectures, all on the northern coast.

According to traditional Japanese lore, the fish rise to the surface and beach themselves to warn of an impending earthquake – and there are scientific theories that bottom-dwelling fish may very well be susceptible to movements in seismic fault lines and act in uncharacteristic ways in advance of an earthquake – but experts here are placing more faith in their constant high-tech monitoring of the tectonic plates beneath the surface.

Pacific Northwest at Risk of Mega Earthquake

Just 50 miles off the Pacific Northwest coast is an earthquake hotspot that threatens to unleash on Seattle, Portland and Vancouver the kind of damage that has shattered Chile.

The fault has been dormant for more than 300 years, but when it awakens – tomorrow or decades from now – the consequences could be devastating.

Recent computer simulations of a hypothetical magnitude-9 quake found that shaking could last 2 to 5 minutes – strong enough to potentially cause poorly constructed buildings from British Columbia to Northern California to collapse and severely damage highways and bridges.

via IndyStar.com | AP National | The Indianapolis Star.

Chilean Earthquake Hints At Dangers of Big One for USA

One of the really “Big Ones” to shake the United States was a magnitude-9.0 earthquake along the Pacific Northwest coast more than 300 years ago, before the arrival of huge numbers of people and development, that sent a catastrophic tsunami to Japan.

Were something like that 1700 quake to occur today — and it certainly could, seismologists say — enormous destruction and loss of life would result in a region that is home now to big cities and millions of people.

The magnitude-8.8 earthquake that rocked Chile and sent tsunami fears across the Pacific on Saturday — nearly seven weeks after the enormously deadly quake that destroyed parts of Haiti— serves as a vivid reminder of the perils posed to the United States by countless fault lines and shifting plates.

“It’s not a matter of if, only of when an event like this strikes the people of the United States,” says Marcia McNutt, director of the U.S. Geological Survey. “Shame on us if we don’t prepare.”

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8.8 Earthquake Rocks Chile, Tsunami Alert Issued

A huge 8.8-magnitude earthquake rocked Chile early on Saturday killing at least 78 people, toppling buildings and triggering a tsunami threatening the Pacific rim of fire, officials said.The massive quake plunged much of the Chilean capital, Santiago, into darkness as it snapped power lines and severed communications. AFP journalists spoke of walls and masonry collapsing while people in pajamas fled onto the streets.

Live streaming video from Chile can be seen here.

Television images showed destroyed or heavily damaged buildings and debris-strewn streets.Residents in the south of the city, which appeared to have borne the brunt of the quake, said roads had crumpled and a bridge had been damaged, as an AFP correspondent said buildings “shook like jelly.”

A partial evacuation of Easter Island has been ordered in Chile in the face of possible big tidal waves, President Michelle Bachelet announced. She also said two ships with aid had been dispatched to Robinson Crusoe Island, part of the Juan Fernandez Archipelago, which has been affected by a big tidal wave. Japan’s meteorological agency warned of a tsunami risk across large areas of the Pacific including as far away as the Antarctic, as the Philippines warned low-lying coastal areas to prepare for possible evacuation.

via AFP: At least 78 killed as huge 8.8 quake rocks Chile.

Under The Worlds Greatest Cities, Deadly Plates

Megacities are something new on the planet. Earthquakes are something very old. The two are a lethal combination, as seen in the recent tragedy in Port-au-Prince, where more than 200,000 people perished a catastrophe that scientists say is certain to be repeated somewhere, and probably soon, with death tolls that once again stagger the mind.

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The next Big One could strike Tokyo, Istanbul, Tehran, Mexico City, New Delhi, Kathmandu or the two metropolises near Californi’s San Andreas Fault, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Or it could devastate Dhaka, Jakarta, Karachi, Manila, Cairo, Osaka, Lima or Bogota. The list goes on and on.

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Hundreds of Quakes Are Rattling Yellowstone Park

In the last two weeks, more than 100 mostly tiny earthquakes a day, on average, have rattled a remote area of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, putting scientists who monitor the park’s strange and volatile geology on alert.

Researchers say that for now, the earthquake cluster, or swarm — the second-largest ever recorded in the park — is more a cause for curiosity than alarm. The quake zone, about 10 miles northwest of the Old Faithful geyser, has shown little indication, they said, of building toward a larger event, like a volcanic eruption of the type that last ravaged the Yellowstone region tens of thousands of years ago.

The area is far from any road or community, and the park is relatively empty in winter. Swarms of small quakes, including a significant swarm last year, are relatively common.

But at a time when the disastrous earthquake in Haiti on Jan. 12 has refocused global attention on the earth’s immense store of tectonic energy, scientists say that the Yellowstone swarm, if only because of its volume, bears close observation: as of Sunday, there had been 1,608 quakes since Jan. 17.

“We’re not seeing a pattern that is really discernible yet,” said Henry Heasler, a coordinating scientist for the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, a joint venture of Yellowstone, the United States Geological Survey and the University of Utah. Dr. Heasler said plans were in place to intensify observations in case the swarm continued for a long time or got larger. “We’re ready to ramp up,” he said, including using flights to monitor the area.

Hundreds of Quakes Are Rattling Yellowstone Park – NYTimes.com.

New Madrid Fault – America’s Haiti Waiting To Happen?

One of the strongest series of earthquakes ever to hit the United States happened not in Alaska or along California’s San Andreas fault, but in southeast Missouri along the Mississippi River.

In 1811 and 1812, the New Madrid fault zone that zig zags through five states shook so violently that it shifted furniture in Washington, D.C., and rang church bells in Boston. The series of temblors changed the course of the Mississippi River near Memphis, and historical accounts claim the river even flowed backward briefly.

Geologists consider the New Madrid fault line a major seismic zone and predict that an earthquake roughly the magnitude of the Haiti earthquake (7.0 on the Richter scale) could occur in the area during the next 50 years.

That forecast is of particular concern because the New Madrid zone sits beneath one of the country’s most economically distressed areas – the Delta. In many counties in the Mississippi Delta, the poverty level is triple the national average.

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Honey Bee Decline Linked To Falling Biodiversity

The decline of honeybees seen in many countries may be caused by reduced plant diversity, research suggests. Bees fed pollen from a range of plants showed signs of having a healthier immune system than those eating pollen from a single type, scientists found.

Writing in the journal Biology Letters, the French team says that bees need a fully functional immune system in order to sterilise food for the colony.

Other research has shown that bees and wild flowers are declining in step.

Two years ago, scientists in the UK and The Netherlands reported that the diversity of bees and other insects was falling alongside the diversity of plants they fed on and pollinated.

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Haiti Rocked By Fierce 7.3 Earthquake

Haiti’s strongest earthquake in more than two centuries rocked the Caribbean nation on Tuesday, causing dozens of buildings to collapse and raising fears that many people have died, officials and witnesses said.

Witnesses reported seeing dead bodies lying on the street and hearing cries for help in the impoverished and crowded capital of Port-au-Prince, located just 10 miles northwest of the earthquake’s epicenter, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

“I saw dead bodies, people are screaming, they are on the street panicking, people are hurt,” Raphaelle Chenet, the administrator of Mercy and Sharing, a charity that takes care of 109 orphans, said in a telephone interview from the capital. “There are a lot of wounded, broken heads, broken arms.”

A hospital in Port-au-Prince collapsed, along with dozens of other buildings, including at one building in the presidential compound and one other government ministry building, according to Alice Blanchet, a special adviser to the Haitian government. Other landmark buildings in the capital, including the U.N. headquarters and the Hotel Montana, sustained heavy damage, witnesses said.

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Astronomers Say Discovery of Earth-like Planet Close

Astronomers say they are on the verge of finding planets like Earth orbiting other stars, a key step in determining if we are alone in the universe.A top NASA official and other leading scientists say that within four or five years they should discover the first Earth-like planet where life could develop, or may have already.

A planet close to the size of Earth could even be found sometime this year if preliminary hints from a new space telescope pan out.At the annual American Astronomical Society conference this week, each discovery involving so-called “exoplanets” – those outside our solar system – pointed to the same conclusion: Quiet planets like Earth where life could develop probably are plentiful, despite a violent universe of exploding stars, crushing black holes and colliding galaxies.

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Dead Fish Provoke Alert Around Gulf of Mexico

Mexican officials issued a vigilance alert Tuesday after thousands of dead fish washed up on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

Veracruz state governor Fidel Herrera issued the alert after fishermen reported dead fish along several kilometers (miles) of beaches off eastern Mexico.

“We have to determine if it was a natural phenomenon or if it is more generalized,” Herrera told journalists, adding that Mexican Marines had taken samples from other coastal areas.

Investigators were studying the fish to determine the cause of the deaths, said Aurora Parissi, director of Veracruz state public health laboratory.

via Dead fish provoke alert around Gulf of Mexico.

Blast From Supernova Could Wipe Out Life On Earth

The Earth could soon be wiped out by the explosion of a star more than 3,000 light years away, according to American scientists. It will self-destruct in an explosion called a supernova with the force of 20 billion billion billion megatons of TNT.

New studies show the star, called T Pyxidis, is much closer than previously thought at 3,260 light-years away – a short hop in galactic terms.

So the blast from the thermonuclear explosion could strip away our ozone layer that keeps out deadly space radiation. Life on Earth would then be frazzled.

The doomsday scenario was described yesterday by astronomers from Villanova University, Philadelphia, US.

They said the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite has shown them that T Pyxidis is really two stars, one called a white dwarf that is sucking in gas and steadily growing. When it reaches a critical mass it will blow itself to pieces.

It will become as bright as all the other stars in the galaxy put together and shine like a beacon halfway across the universe.

The experts said the Hubble space telescope has photographed the star gearing up for its big bang with a series of smaller blasts or “burps”, called novas.

These explosions came regularly about every 20 years from 1890 – but stopped after 1967.

So the next blast is nearly 20 years overdue, said scientists Edward M Sion, Patrick Godon and Timothy McClain at the American Astronomical Society in Washington.

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Sun, Moon Responsible for Earthquakes?

Tremors that start deep underground are caused by water being controlled by the sun and moon, a new study by UC Berkeley seismologists has found.

According to ScienceDaily, the study could pave the way for better understanding of earthquakes.

The seismologists studied part of California’s 800-mile San Andreas Fault, which has been responsible for some of the largest U.S. earthquakes. They found that underground fluids copy the movement of the tides causing tremors well below the level where earthquakes occur.

They believe the tremors might be making it easier for the rock to slip, weakening the fault and paving the way for earthquakes to take place.

“It is certainly in the realm of reasonable conjecture that tremors are stressing the fault zone above it,” seismologist Robert Nadeau of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory said.

“The deep San Andreas Fault is moving faster when tremors are more active, presumably stressing the seismogenic zone, loading the fault a little bit faster. And that may have a relationship to stimulating earthquake activity.”

via FOXNews.com – Sun, Moon Responsible for Earthquakes?.

Mayon Volcano – Alert level 5 for Mayon Imminent

Volcanologists at the Philippine Institute on Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) mull over raising the highest possible alert status on Mount Mayon in Legazpi, Albay after observing continuing trends of increasing volcanic activities in the volcano.

Jimmy Sincioco, spokesperson of PHIVOLCS on Mount Mayon activities, said that hoisting Alert Level 5 would be probable in the next few days as soon as they observed “surface manifestations” hazardous eruption in the perfect-coned volcano.

“Even if there have been intensified level of volcanic activities in Mayon, we are still waiting for some critical factors before we raise the status to Level 5,” Sincioco said, explaining that Level 5 is only hoisted if there is already hazardous eruption going on.

“But right now, there are still no surface manifestations like voluminous eruption columns that could cause hazardous pyroclastic flows and perceptible earthquakes,” he reiterated in a phone interview.

Sincioco clarified that the pyroclastic flow presently coming down from the higher and middle slopes of Mayon can only be considered as secondary, which originates from the piles of lava deposit earlier spewed by the world-renowned volcano.

Alert level 5 for Mayon imminent – Source

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