Happy birthday to Danish #seismologist Inge Lehmann (1888 – 1993) who demonstrated that the Earth's core is not a single molten sphere, but contained an inner solid core, in ‘36. She was a pioneer #womanInScience, a brilliant seismologist & lived to be 105.
As she first postulated, the #earth has roughly 3 equal concentric sections: mantle, liquid outer core & solid inner core. 🧵1/n
A couple of weeks ago I finished a beast of a project.
The interactive installation (titled InStability) is an artistic endeavor to demonstrate how seismic stations in Iceland detect earthquakes.
Visitors are invited to touch the map, triggering "earthquakes", and observe how LEDs, representing seismic and GPS stations, light up as the seismic waves propagate across Reykjanes peninsula.
[#HDR defense] of IRAP astronomer Sébastien Deheuvels this Monday morning. Topic: the #seismology of #subgiant and red giant stars.
Analysis of seismic data acquired by the #CoRoT and #Kepler space missions has enabled Sébastien Deheuvels and his team to revisit the problem of #chemical element transport and angular momentum in stars, measure the #internal rotation of sub-giants and red giants, detect the presence of #magnetic fields in stellar interiors, ...
@Smithsonianmag reports: "Sixty years ago, the largest earthquake in U.S. history shocked geologists. It’s still driving scientific discoveries today."
As I write this (and I may update later), there have been 19 earthquakes in central New Jersey beginning with a real glass-shaker of 4.8 Magnitude this morning at 10:23. I, unfortunately, did not feel it but several close relations did because they were closer. Good for them. It’s always a cool bucket list item to feel a substantial but not dangerous earthquake to remind you of how small and unsubstantial people are.
Earthquakes three days before the eclipse are not helpful for people trying to be rational
If you have been following along, the quakes are just 3 days ahead of the eclipse. The 2024 eclipse will not pass over this epicentral area of New Jersey, but the correlation in time has sent the nervous and Biblically-minded people into fits. The timing makes this very hard to explain that there is no correlation between the two interesting events. Seriously, no matter what I say, certain people will not believe me. Take one very awful person, MTG:
I mean, TAKE HER, please, get her the hell out of here. Sadly, she is not the only one promoting the idea that End Times are upon us. The heat from religious fearmongering about the eclipse was just turned up. I have to go back and update my last post because I found more about it being the Rapture, End of the World, with human sacrifices, etc. Check it out if you haven’t already, just to feel prepared for potential chaos on Monday.
The need to share the experience with each other
The eclipse is one of those events that can, actually, bring people together in a collective experience. Today’s earthquake(s) did the same. People wanted to talk to others and share what they felt. They turned to social media to do that, which is really cool.
What wasn’t great were the very many “suddenly seismologists” who appeared to opine about plate tectonics, the Ramapo fault, and the logarithmic magnitude scale. It did not help that the news media appeared to grab their meteorologist to deal with the science of earthquake reporting. The amount of misinformation may exceed the factual information. The degree and quantity of insane claims will grow, I’m sure. If you want to see some unhinged ideas, they are on TikTok and Reddit.
Just like with all the Google University bridge engineers who emerged on the internet 10 days ago, people want to contribute to the conversation by sounding sciencey. They want attention. Many of the commenters who felt the quake were very scared and overreacted because they don’t know anything about earth sciences. This is not unexpected, but social media feeds full of bogus airbags spouting nonsense makes all this much worse. Scientific explanations can help us understand a scary thing and alleviate some of the concerns. But the catch is that people have to be able to hear qualified and helpful voices and to trust them. The “qualified” and “helpful” voices are being drowned out, and the “trust” has been eroding for decades.
It’s disturbing to be faced with the barrage of information without having a trusted source about science and nature. Where is Carl Sagan when you need him! Note that some media outlets called the 21st century version of Dr. Sagan – Bill Nye. That’s OK, I know he checks his sources before speaking.
In a fortunate bit of timing (maybe), the BBC posted an article about how and why earthquakes are occurring outside of plate boundaries, in unexpected places. This was published 3 days ago:
Something very weird is happening to the planet’s earthquakes
Earth-shattering seismic events can occur away from the fault lines between tectonic plates. And there’s no easy way to predict when or where they’ll hit.
The article describes the problem of intraplate quakes, like the one that occurred in New Jersey. The faults can be hidden or quiet for so long that the population is unprepared. Exactly what happened today. Usually, intraplate faults can’t store a huge amount of energy so when they rupture, it isn’t big. But it can get up to magnitude 7, which is definitely destructive. If you are feeling nervous about earthquakes, I suggest you not read that article because it might make things worse. Clearly, these natural events are adding to the severe national anxiety we are experiencing every day for the past decade.
I told my cousin in New Jersey that aftershocks are likely and they did happen. It may not be just the seismic ones that are felt. People are edgy, the daily news is unsettling. When the ground actually shakes and your congressperson is insisting that the sky is falling, we are rudely reminded how very mired we are in Strange Times.
Finally, a favor to ask: if you see any strange stories about the earthquake, drop me a line. I’d love the links. See email address in the header or follow me on Mastodon.
We know where the next big earthquakes will happen — but not when.
As Taiwan faces aftershocks from yesterday's magnitude 7.4 quake, @voxrss reports: "Scientists have drastically improved our understanding of seismic events. Here are eight things to know."
Using a sensor based on a Raspberry Pi, Fernando et al. recorded the sonic boom from the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft re-entering Earth's atmosphere and its subsequent ground shaking.
#introduction - I'm Anya Reading - good to meet/connect!
Working on Antarctica (tectonics, ice sheet change, int. with ocean and atmosphere, inter disc. links). Focus on ground-based geophysics (esp. seismology) and compute. Professor of Geophysics at #UTAS#physics#comp_antarctic group, enabling/advocate for research, learning, #diversity in #stem.
#seattle Are there local geology lecture series that are open to the public, especially any that cover recent discoveries/papers/topics/etc? When I lived in Boston, a geological observatory held monthly lectures on weeknights.
PNSN would be perfect, but they don’t seem to do that. UW ESS has a cool-looking colloquium series but it’s during the workday. And Nick Zentner’s way out in Ellensburg. I’d just love to meet other geology geeks! #geology#seismology#earthquake#volcano#PNW#scicomm
Another of scientists without a known birthday: my #linocut of ancient Chinese Han Dynasty #polymath & statesman Zhang Heng (78-139) who invented a seismoscope (simplified seismometer which does not make a record of earth motions) to detect distant earthquakes & indicate their direction, 2000 years ago! Here with a reconstruction of his seismoscope, schematic of how it might have worked & horizontal earthquake surface 🧵1/n
The powerful earthquake that rocked Ishikawa Prefecture on Monday caused crustal changes of up to 3 meters in the Noto region near the epicenter.
Japan's Geospatial Information, GSI, officials said they found crustal changes across the Noto Peninsula, such as up to 3 meters in the western part of Wajima City, and a maximum 1 meter in the northern parts of Suzu City.
Scientists and local authorities had been tracking the eruption’s precursors for weeks and evacuated residents. Then the magma stalled. For weeks, scientists and officials anticipated the eruption of a volcanic fissure near Grindavík, a city of about 3,300 along the southern coast of Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula. An...
I just had such a fascinating morning. I live in Chateauguay on Montreal’s South Shore and my property was chosen to be one location for the Montreal Seismic Monitoring Project.
Prof. Yajing Liu and her assistant buried a small seismograph in my front yard. It has a lithium battery in the top. The other pointy end screws off when the team wants to access the data once it’s collected.
Interested in hosting a seismometer in your backyard?
Join the Montreal Seismic Monitoring Network!
Looking for up to 48 sites for deployment in December 2023
Eruption Now Unlikely Near Icelandic Town - Eos (eos.org)
Scientists and local authorities had been tracking the eruption’s precursors for weeks and evacuated residents. Then the magma stalled. For weeks, scientists and officials anticipated the eruption of a volcanic fissure near Grindavík, a city of about 3,300 along the southern coast of Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula. An...