Japan Probes Mysterious Vapor Eruption

Saeed al-Sahaf writes "From the BBC, Japan's Coast Guard dispatched aircraft Sunday to survey a 3,300-foot-high column of steam rising from the Pacific Ocean off the island of Iwo Jima. MSNBC has a nice picture. The vapor was reported Saturday after Japanese troops stationed on the small island observed the massive cloudy plume rise from the sea about 30 miles southeast of the island. 'It's highly likely that it's caused by an eruption of an underwater volcano,' Japanese officials said. But others are not so sure, and are speculating that Godzilla has awoken from its nap. Tokyo remains calm at this hour."

Re:Sounds like a nice island...

[patio11]

The name means "Sulfur Island" and they didn't just decide to name it after an element because the cool names were already taken. Due to volcanic activity, the place constantly smells like rotten eggs, and looks like Hell relocated to the central Pacific. That was BEFORE the US and Japan fought a major battle over it, littering the place with unexploded ordinance (grandpa did his part cleaning it up, bringing two live artillery shells to his house as souvenirs, where they stayed undisturbed until he died... we then had to call the Chicago bomb squad twice in one week after we found them in the basement). Its still in a vaguely decent geostrategic position, but anything else you'd use an island in the Pacific (tourism, etc) for can be done better at Okinawa or Hawaii, or for that matter just about anywhere other than Iwo.

Re:I saw this one

[hysma]

There was a test done once, the details of which I cannot recall exactly as I don't know that I ever knew them. The gist of it was that they set of some high explosives far below a ship. A large ship. The point was to see if the 'bubbles' would do any damage to and/or sink the ship.

I saw a program that had something similar to this called "Disaster Detectives" I believe. They wanted to see if a release of bubbles could sink a ship. Turns out they didn't do much if directly under. However if the bubbles were off to the side, they would create enough of a splash to spill into the ship and sink it.

Re:Damn... Japan Still Exists

[ScrewMaster]

So, in other words, they don't know what this is but they're sure it won't cause a tsnunami.

Okay.

"In other news, Japan's Seismological Agency said it would be a good idea if people didn't stand quite so close to the shoreline."

Re:I saw this one

[Mateorabi]

There is also a theory that evaporating/subliming methane deposits can also sink ships due to the aerated water not being dense enough.

There is also speculation that the Bermuda Triangle has lots of these unstable deposits. Would explain a few things.

Re:I saw this one

[dfjghsk]

Actually, Lloyd's of London and the Coast Guard has determined the Bermuda Triangle to be no more dangerous than any other piece of the ocean.

More info in wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

Re:I saw this one

[crawling_chaos]

I suggest that you look for a copy of the sadly out of print The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: SOLVED. A librarian in Texas pulled things like the actual weather reports and did statistical analysis on the so-called Triangle and found a few key things:

• The "ghost ship" stories like the Marie Celeste are drunken sailor's tales. There is no record of such a ship even being built.
• Most of the "clear weather" disappearances, like the TBM Avengers, actually happened during foul weather. No reporters bothered to check the actual weather records.
• Quite a few "Bermuda Triangle" disappearances occurred well outside of the triangle, such that it needs to be redefined as pretty much the entire South Atlantic.
• And finally, when you factor out all of these circumstances, the unexplained loss rate is average for an area with that much shipping traffic.

I would furthermore add that since the advent of GPS and more reliable marine radio, we sure haven't heard much noise from the Graveyard of the Atlantic.