Agloco
12-15-2011, 10:41 AM
I wanted to share some insight on the geophysical aspects of the disaster which unfolded in Japan during March 2011. This is an article published in the most recent issue of Physics Today. Rarely are headline articles made available without subscrption, so I wanted to put this out there. It's a good read.
As an additional morsel, the PDF is available for download free. Link is at the right.......
http://www.physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v64/i12/p33_s1?bypassSSO=1
On 11 March 2011, the nation of Japan and geophysicists around the world received a terrible surprise: A huge earthquake, significantly stronger than people had anticipated or prepared for in the region, struck off the northeastern shore of Honshu. Shear sliding on the fault where the Pacific Plate thrusts below Japan lasted for 150 anxiety-filled seconds, shifted the coast of Japan up to 5 m eastward, and lifted the sea floor by as much as 5 m over 15 000 km2, an area comparable to the state of Connecticut.1,2 Displacements as large as 60 to 80 m—the largest ever measured for an earthquake—occurred near the subduction trench, and a total strain energy equivalent to a 100-megaton explosion was released during the sliding. This was the great 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake, so-named for the region it struck, shown in figure 1.
As an additional morsel, the PDF is available for download free. Link is at the right.......
http://www.physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v64/i12/p33_s1?bypassSSO=1
On 11 March 2011, the nation of Japan and geophysicists around the world received a terrible surprise: A huge earthquake, significantly stronger than people had anticipated or prepared for in the region, struck off the northeastern shore of Honshu. Shear sliding on the fault where the Pacific Plate thrusts below Japan lasted for 150 anxiety-filled seconds, shifted the coast of Japan up to 5 m eastward, and lifted the sea floor by as much as 5 m over 15 000 km2, an area comparable to the state of Connecticut.1,2 Displacements as large as 60 to 80 m—the largest ever measured for an earthquake—occurred near the subduction trench, and a total strain energy equivalent to a 100-megaton explosion was released during the sliding. This was the great 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake, so-named for the region it struck, shown in figure 1.