Page 256 - Faults News Today

Its all part of this pacific -- well, the borders of the pacific plate. as i was mentioning earlier, we now have seen australia, this massive rupture of the northwest side of the pacific plate. we had the 22nd earthquake in christchurch. an earlier one also in september in new zealand. thats southwest side of the plate. a huge earthquake in chile last year. 8.7, i think in magnitude, and the southeast side, and the one, therefore, untouched thus far, untouched side of this pacific plate is calif...

Weave had big ones on the west coast -- the northwest -- the japanese one the other day. new zealand on the 22nd of february. chile last year, down in the other corner, and the one missing component is whats happening in the northeast at the pacific plate, and there there are two very, very dangerous faults that havent given way for a very long time. the first is the very familiar one. the san andreas fault that underlies san francisco which ruptured in 1906 105 years ago, and an even more dange...

To ensure that there is full evacuation with potassium iodide around nuclear power plants in our country. we have to ensure that we do not allow for the construction of new nuclear power plants on seismic faults or with designs that are vulnerable to earthquakes which is what is now happening at the nuclear regulatory commission. we have to listen to what is happening in japan and protect ourselves and our people against those catastrophic consequences. >> thanks for coming on. we appreciate you...

See how devastating the effects of mother nature are. its just extraordinary to watch. you know, it reminds us in many ways of some of the scenes that we saw after hurricane katrina, when new orleans was swamped by water from the hurricane in the gulf. >> hadnt heard that analogy, but i absolutely understand why you make it. when it comes to predicting an earthquake, how accurate can scientists be on either location or magnitude? >> well, we know that there are a number of different faults in a ...

Feet, its not so hot. its the same blow dryer and same heat coming away. but if you let the heat spread out, or you let the water and waves spread out over many, many miles and slow down a little bit before it got to the u.s. or south america, the waves are not so big. >> was there something, jim, about this particular area in japan that makes it vulnerable to these earthquakes or tsunamis? >> this part of japan is along the kind of ring of very large faults that surround the pacific basin. and ...

Directly linked, then its a serious situation. but that the of itself does not necessarily mean major contamination. if they are linked, if the building has collapsed because of something going on inside the core, maybe as the water is boiled at a very high temperature, some of the water breaks up into separate hydrogen oxygen and they can recombine then we would expect to measure high levels of contamination shortly. so we should with soon know from the contamination levels whether this is a fu...

General they have very large stresses associated with them, so the displacement can be very large, and also they tend to be the faults they often find under water just off the coastline. so they are generally speaking, are going to be the kinds of earthquakes that produce these tsunamis. >> i know that japan has a very sophisticated tsunami warning system. how well did it work on this occasion? >> so the seismic sensor system is -- we put motion detectors on land all over the globe really, and t...

If you take the power of a blow dryer, and you put it close to your head, its really hot. if you put it away a couple of feet, its not so hot. its the same blow dryer and same heat coming out. but if you let the heat spread out, or you let the water and waves spread out over many, many miles and slow down a little bit before it got to the u.s. or south america, the waves are not so big. >> was there something, jim, about this particular area in japan that makes it vulnerable to these earthquakes...

Erupted 45 days later. thats how long its been since that big a quake in japan. isha? >> chad myers, thank you. i want to bring in jim garrity, a seismologist at columbia university. thanks for joining us. chad talked a little bit about how tsunamis are created. talk to us a little bit more about that, and the system thats in place to detect these things before they hit. >> sure. so in general tsunamis are created when we have these earthquakes that occur predominantly earthquakes that occur in ...

Once the earthquake occurs, then we have predictability of what the tsunami will be. but when the earthquake will occur, thats earthquake prediction, and that doesnstill doesnt work. >> it doesnt work? thats what people want. in california we have major fault lines. youre saying we cant track the way the tectonic plates are moving. can we measure the plates -- >> we know how much plates move, how much stress has built up. but when it goes, when it breaks is still associated with very high uncert...