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Earth Science

Earthquake Scientists Finally Explain 9-Day Global 'Unidentified Seismic Object' (msn.com) 58

Posted by EditorDavid from the game-of-Quake dept.
It was one year ago that "an odd seismic signal appeared at scientific stations around the globe," reports the Washington Post. "A day passed, and the slow tremor still reverberated. When it continued for a third day, scientists worldwide began assembling..." Some initially thought the seismic instruments recording the signal were broken, but that was quickly nixed. Maybe it was a new volcano emerging before their eyes, others said. One jokingly ruled out an alien party. As theories were checked off, the scientists dubbed the signal an "Unidentified Seismic Object," or USO... Nine days later, the vibrations greatly dissipated. But the mystery of the USO lasted much longer.

A year later, the puzzle has been solved, according to a study published in the journal Science on Thursday. It took about 70 people from 15 different countries and more than 8,000 exchanged messages (long enough for a 900-page detective novel) to crack the case. The short answer: A mega-tsunami created waves that sloshed back and forth in a fjord in Greenland, creating vibrations that traveled around the world.
Extra heat from global warming "thinned a glacier in eastern Greenland over time so much that it could no longer support the mountain rock above it," according to the article. A mile-long avalanche "plunged into the Dickson Fjord, triggering a 650-foot-high tsunami — one of the highest seen in recent history." Like the rhythmic waves in a bathtub, "the mega-tsunami wave traveled back and forth in the inlet," which "radiated seismic waves globally, shaking the planet for nine days before it petered out."

In August a German research team had studied the megatsunami, concluding that climate change was speeding the melt of Greenland's glaciers and increasing the chance of landslide-driven megatsunamis. The article reports that an author of that study said when comparing it to this one, "The methods chosen by the teams are different, but the results agree well."
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Earthquake Scientists Finally Explain 9-Day Global 'Unidentified Seismic Object' More

Earthquake Scientists Finally Explain 9-Day Global 'Unidentified Seismic Object'

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  • A USO? (Score:3)

    by blastard ( 816262 ) on Sunday September 15, 2024 @10:00AM (#64788717)

    Quick, get the US government involved..

    • Quick, get the US government involved..

      The real reason is that this was a diversion by Haitian imgrunts to sneak in and eat our pets while we were distracted - I saw that on Television.

      • Quick, get the US government involved..

        The real reason is that this was a diversion by Haitian imgrunts to sneak in and eat our pets while we were distracted - I saw that on Television.

        Thing is, not only is the convicted felon lying about all this, but his partner in crime even admitted he made up the whole story [newsweek.com]:

        "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do," Vance told CNN's Dana Bash in the interview.

        And by suffering he of course meant having to listen to him and the convicted felon speak.

        • Quick, get the US government involved..

          The real reason is that this was a diversion by Haitian imgrunts to sneak in and eat our pets while we were distracted - I saw that on Television.

          Thing is, not only is the convicted felon lying about all this, but his partner in crime even admitted he made up the whole story [newsweek.com]:

          "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do," Vance told CNN's Dana Bash in the interview.

          And by suffering he of course meant having to listen to him and the convicted felon speak.

          And with the project 2025 master plan, they seem to want to inflict a lot of suffering.

    • They tried but the inhabitants understandably rebuffed TFG's overtures to buy Greenland.

    • ...it's fat jiggly aliens!

  • It's always Russia.

  • Pics or it didn't happen! (Score:3)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday September 15, 2024 @10:19AM (#64788759)

    Nuugaatsiaq and lllorsuit in Greenland had to be abandoned because of the threat of tsunamis similar to the one in the Dickson fjord.

    8200 years ago we lost Doggerland to the Storegga underwater landslide... though that's only a popular theory among researchers and not considered a 100% certainty.

    It's kind of cool that we got to 'see' a megatsunami but simultaneously sad that the only record of it is seismic and it wasn't captured on video. A 200m high wall of water rushing down a fjord would have to be an awesome sight.

    • Nuugaatsiaq and lllorsuit in Greenland had to be abandoned because of the threat of tsunamis similar to the one in the Dickson fjord.

      8200 years ago we lost Doggerland to the Storegga underwater landslide... though that's only a popular theory among researchers and not considered a 100% certainty.

      It's kind of cool that we got to 'see' a megatsunami but simultaneously sad that the only record of it is seismic and it wasn't captured on video. A 200m high wall of water rushing down a fjord would have to be an awesome sight.

      As long as you were at least 201 meters above sea level.

      • Oh it would have been an awesome sight at sea level too. And the last one you'll ever remember.

      • Re:Pics or it didn't happen! (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday September 15, 2024 @11:59AM (#64788933)

        The glory of the technology is that you don't have to be there.

        In fact, given the low, low cost these days of the required setup... I'd be tempted to put a string of solar-powered HD cameras along the fjords at highest risk of a tsunami and have a wireless relay to a recorder safely above the anticipated level of destruction. Most of these places are so remote you don't have to worry about someone vandalizing or stealing your setup, though I assume you might have to visit once in a while to clean lenses and panels.

        If another tsunami happens we could get video of it afterwards.

  • 650 tf tsunami and no one videod it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Sunday September 15, 2024 @10:23AM (#64788771) Homepage

    The screams of dispair from tiktokers can be heard even now.

    Seriously - anyone who thinks man knows everything that goes on on this planet needs to remember this event. With 7 billion people and god knows how many weather and spy satellites and the largest tsunami in recent history went unnoticed because it was in greedland.

    • Can you imagine if somebody had a live feed there? You'd spend a year or so replaying the clip and making money off the talk show circuit discussing how you happened to get so lucky and how awesome the captured video was.

      But if you happened to be a reasonably attractive woman doing yoga in a bikini in the foreground and posted the results on social media... you'd have followers for life, sponsors lined up for years, and be flush with cash.

      • how you happened to get so lucky and how awesome the captured video was.

        No. You would get the conspiracy nuts who would claim you staged the whole thing by setting off explosives in the fjord. Because that's the only way you would have a camera there in the first place at the exact moment this happened.

    • The screams of dispair from tiktokers can be heard even now.

      Seriously - anyone who thinks man knows everything that goes on on this planet needs to remember this event. With 7 billion people and god knows how many weather and spy satellites and the largest tsunami in recent history went unnoticed because it was in greedland.

      8 billion people.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      The fact of where it was in Greenland explains why no one noticed it. Most of the sloshing never made it out of fiord.

      On the other hand, there are possible landslides that could occur in the Hawiian Islands and they could have very devastating effects on the West Coast of the U.S.

      • The Canary Islands are volcanic and off the W coast of Africa. There is apparently a serious chance that a volcanic eruption could trigger a similar landslide to this one in Greenland, and unlike the W coast of the US - the E coast is substantially flat. Luckily for Florida, the distance between those islands and Miami is around 4000 miles while Hawaii is maybe 2500 miles from the W coast (very very approximately).

    • We can take the before and after as key frames and AI generate all the rest of the frames right in there for a fun 15 second clip.

    • the largest tsunami in recent history went unnoticed because it was in greedland.

      Umm, this was not in America. Check your location sir.

  • Greenland has a population of 56,000 and it hosts a number of seismic research activities. One would expect someone there to notice the seismic activity--instead you have this detective work from thousands of miles away.

    • Greenland has a population of 56,000 and it hosts a number of seismic research activities. One would expect someone there to notice the seismic activity--instead you have this detective work from thousands of miles away.

      Well, it wasn't live-streamed, so ...

    • There are 58 contributors cited in the paper and the first one is a researcher in Greenland.

  •   "When it continued for a third day, scientists worldwide began assembling.."

    They don't use a high level language like C# or PHP ?

  • ...if a mountain falls into a fjord & nobody's there to hear it, does it make a sound?

  • A good account of the wellington 1855 earthquake can be found here...

    https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/... [nzgeo.com]

    Though the water wasn't hundreds of meters high...

    • Politics, suppressing reports of the earthquake so as to support Wellington's (successful) bid to become the capital.

      That made me think of the eradication of St. Pierre on Martinique [earthmagazine.org] in 1903, having read elsewhere that the governor refused to let people evacuate because an election was due to take place and he needed the voters to stay put. That report is not in the above link, but the Wikipedia entry for the disaster points to this archived article [archive.org] which makes the same claim.

  • This is something of a Dupe, although the original article was over three weeks ago [slashdot.org].

  • OK, the Dickson Fjord is directly west of Svalbard and the Fjord is about two miles wide.

    That must've been amazing but nobody really calls a splash like that a tsunami, which implies an ocean traveling wave that breaks on shore.

    Also, Slashdot dupes cause climate change.

  • LOL Extra heat from global warming "thinned a glacier in eastern Greenland over time so much that it could no longer support the mountain rock above it," according to the article. A mile-long avalanche "plunged into the Dickson Fjord, triggering a 650-foot-high tsunami — one of the highest seen in recent history."

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