Quake Changes Earth's Rotation, Moves Islands 917
kernel panic attack writes "This week's deadly Asian Quake and Tsunami may have been so powerful,
that it changed the rate of Earth's rotation. In a Reuters article,
a NASA geophysicist theorizes that the quake compacted the Earth enough
to speed up the planet's rotation by 3 microseconds. A second
article
says the quake moved undersea tectonic plates by up to 98 feet, shifting
islands near Sumatra out to sea an unknown distance. Also, a
USGS team wants images from commercial satellite operators to
help pinpoint coastline damage. Lastly, an interesting article from the Australian Spaceguard Survey about the need for a Tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean. The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves." The current estimated death toll is now nearly 70,000; Amazon and Google, among others, have added front-page links to simplify donating to the disaster relief effort.
Rotation (Score:5, Interesting)
What is the impact? (Score:3, Interesting)
What will be the impact of this on geostationnary satellites?
On the measuring of time?
On the GPS?
Re:Rotation (Score:2, Interesting)
read the article here [aljazeera.net]
As was mentioned yesterday (Score:5, Interesting)
Absolutely amazing, the death-toll is reaching 69,000. I don't mean to be pessimistic, but would a warning system really have helped, though? I mean there are accounts of entire villages just being swept out to sea. Any life, obviously, is worth saving, but in the future I wonder how you could warn villages without power/communication systems. Very tragic.
Indian ocean isnt the only place one is needed (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5652141/ [msn.com]
slowing rotation (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:As was mentioned yesterday (Score:3, Interesting)
How many separate waves were there? (Score:1, Interesting)
As a general rule, if you evacuate an area due to a tsunami, should you expect several waves several hours apart?
Re:24 hours on FOX (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Apple Too (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple has been doing this for quite some time. Last one I remember was the salutation of Jimmy Carter [editthispage.com] (sorry I couldn't find a better reference). I think they also ironically [bbc.co.uk] did the same thing when one of the Beatles passed away.
the author is right (Score:2, Interesting)
The author is essentially right. Growing up in hawaii, the tourists are our number one source of income, and our number one source of stupidity. Everytime Japan had earthquakes, especially the last one in Kobe a few years ago, the whole coastline was evacuated around the islands. Hotels, businesses, schools, residents along the beaches were forced to move inland toward higher ground. Yet, there were the few tourists, standing on the reef walls, video cameras in hand, waiting to FILM the tsunami. Although that tsunami turned out to be only a foot tall (the local geological surveyists and warning systems calculated the exact time the wave would have arrived), the tourists were still in great danger had the tsunami been 20+ feet tall. Unfortunately it takes an event on a scale such as this to make the general world realize the need for education on such natural disasters, so that maybe now an early warning system would be effective in saving lives, rather than losing the amount we have in the last week.
Re:As was mentioned yesterday (Score:3, Interesting)
It is noted that Sumatra was devastated by the 9.0 earthquake, followed twenty minutes later by the worst of the tsunami. In addition, parts of the Indian subcontinent were flooded up to several miles inland, making the visual warning inadequate. On the hillier islands, it may have made a considerable difference.
Because this event is so legendary, it stands to reason that this knowledge can stick around and prevent such large loss of life in the future.
Re:Donations (Score:2, Interesting)
Days since Iraq war began: 653
Don't let those facts get in the way, either.
Biblical Proportions (Score:2, Interesting)
Had this event happened ~3000 years ago, it probably would have become a major chapter in some religious text, if not the foundation for a completely new religion (ocean worship?).
Re:Let's not make fun.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not any more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000102&si d=ash4iKmCSW6Y&refer=uk [bloomberg.com]
And from http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html [salon.com]:
U.S. is the world's Scrooge
"The United States is not stingy," Colin Powell said on CNN this morning. "We are the greatest contributor to international relief efforts in the world."
Powell was responding to comments yesterday by Jan Egeland, the United Nation's emergency relief coordinator, who suggested that wealthy countries' initial pledges of assistance in response to the Asian disaster had been insufficient. "It is beyond me, why are we so stingy, really," Egeland said. So far, the U.S. has pledged $35 million in relief aid for victims of the earthquake and tsunamis, and Powell insisted today that the U.S. will give much more -- possibly into the billions -- as the scope of the disaster becomes better known.
Let's hope so, because as it is, despite Powell's assurances, the rest of the world regards the U.S. as a heartless Scrooge -- and for good reason. A couple weeks ago Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economist who heads the United Nation's Millennium Project to reduce poverty, hunger, and disease in developing nations, stopped by Salon's offices to discuss how the United States was shirking its responsibilities to the world's poorest people. In much of the world, Sachs told us, there remains the impression that the U.S. is interested in helping people only when it has something to gain -- and these days we only engage with the rest of the world on anti-terrorism policy, more often than not through war. The United States contributes about a tenth of one percent of its income in aid to poor countries -- an abysmal rate that falls below that of all industrialized nations, and is dwarfed by the giving rate of Canada (0.26 percent), Germany (0.28 percent), the United Kingdom (0.34 percent), and France (0.42 percent).
What's worse, this situation doesn't seem to be improving. Indeed, in just the past two months, the Bush administration has quietly reduced its commitments to global anti-poverty programs, cutting its contributions to groups like Save the Children and Catholic Relief Services by as much as $100 million. The move prompted the New York Times to ask in an editorial: "The administration can conjure up $87 billion for the fighting in Iraq, but can it really not come up with more than $15.6 billion -- our overall spending on development assistance in 2002 -- to help stop an 8-year-old AIDS orphan in Cameroon from drinking sewer water or to buy a mosquito net for an infant in Sierra Leone?"
When the state of Florida suffered four hurricanes this summer, the Bush administration quickly and admirably pried open the federal wallet, and so far Floridians have received more than $3 billion in federal and state disaster assistance. Nobody's saying that Floridians didn't deserve that aid; they surely did. But what happened in Asia over the weekend may turn out to be one of the worst natural disasters in human history. More than 40,000 people are now believed dead, and officials fear that the toll may surpass 60,000. A good test of the Bush administration's generosity -- not to mention the generosity of all Americans -- is whether our government can now muster as much money for far-off foreigners as we could for Americans in an all-important swing state.
Per Capita: Wrong metric (Score:4, Interesting)
> >$147000000,000 - spent on war in Iraq
> > 17000 - rough number of Iraqis killed
> > = $8,647,058 - spent to kill each Iraqi
> >I'm ashamed to be an American. Call me a troll if you want, but these numbers are sickening.
>
>$147,000,000,000 - spent on war in Iraq
>25,000,000 - number of people freed from dictator
>= $5880 - spent to free an individual
> I'm proud to be an American. Call me a troll if you want, but at least I know my country _did_ something.
Suppose we drop a cheap ($10M) set of nukes across Baghdad and in doing so, kill 1,000,000 people.
$147,010,000,000 spent.
1,017,000 Iraqis dead.
24,000,000 Iraqis liberated.
That comes out to:
$1,445,526 - spent to kill each Iraqi, and
$61,204 - spent to free an individual.
In short, the nuclear annihilation of 1,000,000 civilians would cut the cost of each preventable civilian death by 85%, while simultaneously boosting per capita humanitarian spending per capita by 20%. And somehow both of you would regard this as an improvement?
I'm ashamed when Americans attempt to optimize the wrong metric. Call me a QA weenie if you want, but at least I know something about process engineering!
Re:100% goes straight to the Red Cross (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Amazon Donation... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Stingy Americans? Here's One... (Score:3, Interesting)
Old and dated mean the same thing, so you repeat yourself. I wrote the years anyway so there was no chance for confusion. Your accusation of "just plain wrong" is simply a lie. The figures are not wrong. You just don't like the way I presented them because you agree that the US ODA figures are terrible and you want to discuss US private donations instead. Accusing my figures of being "just plain wrong" is dishonest of you.
Actually I haven't yet, I was reading some other stuff.
Alright. If you want a figure fight, you've got one.
Here is a rather good article on ODA by country [globalissues.org]. You'll see USA has the stingiest "1st world" government offering with only 0.14% of GDP.
Looking at total ODA the US only beats other countries because of its huge population. The European total absolutely dwarfs the USA total and is a fairer comparison for populations.
Yes, private aid is greater - apparently the US citizens are nicer than the US government - but read further into that same article. The problem with private donations is special interests.
And further...
That's one of the larger problems with private donations; they're not necessarily charitable.
Your turn.
Re:I disagree (Score:2, Interesting)
I strongly disagree with you on the local charity front. Charity should always start at home. Of course, they should give globally but when you take from a community I think it is important that you give back. By take I don't just mean by selling your products to them but by using the resources of the community such as police, fire, ambulance, road maintenance, etc. Many of these companies don't pay proportionately in taxes what they use. Sure there are some huge companies that should give to more communities than others but they number only in the dozens. I should also point out that the US is in a trade deficit which means that more of our money goes overseas than comes in. Perhaps you should attack Japan instead.
What people hate me? They haven't even met me. I gave what I could to the relief effort just like I volunteered my time after september 11 which affect my community directly. Our country gives FAR more per capita than any other country in the world. You are barking up the wrong tree if you thinks that people hate the US because it doesn't give enough to charity.
I mentioned Microsoft because the other poster mentioned Microsoft. Other companies would be the same. And I don't pay Amazon with cash. I pay with credit which they then get charged a percentage to process, lose a part to cost of goods sold, taxes, etc. and some of the rest is used to pay their employees and other overhead costs. Obviously they end up with money at the end of the day but the law requires that most of that has to go back into the business or to the shareholders. In no country can a company donate its entire profits to charity. Remember that a company is owned by its shareholders not the board. That isn't US specific either.
And if you donate to a charity and make a big stink about it then it isn't charity. It is advertising expense. I would also be wary of those companies that say they donate a percentage of profit. Make sure you find out what percentage and what they define profit as. Also see my comment about shareholders rights.
Re:Atlantic Ocean -vs- Pacific Ocean (Score:3, Interesting)