Japan Quake Causes 8 Cm Shift In Earth's Axis

This is a part of an e-mail I got this afternoon from my cousin who is vacationing in Japan. They are 400 kilometers from the earthquake. Their friends are stranded on the road and cannot meet them.

"We continue to feel mild tremors regularly--we look up at the lights that hang down on chains in our meeting room to see how much they are swinging."

Interesting thanks

2.5 meters East, I'm guessing. Pity they edit out the little informative bits.

CNN reports an axis shift of 10 cm (4"), but shows interesting satellite before/after coastline photos.

Yeah. It's a real hodge-podge of measurements in the news out there at the moment. I suppose eventually the USGS and other authorities quoted will set the record straight.

_{B nice if they just included the metric it's done in un-messed with}

Don't be sorry - hardly your fault

Oddly 2.4 m is 8 feet and 10" is 250 mm (25 cm)

Whereas 10 ft is 3 m and 8 cm (80mm) is about 3 inches.

looks like a bit of a 'conversion confusion' might be happening too

I kinda thought that, too---had to go back and look at all 3 sources twice just to make sure I wasn't getting all bolluxed up.

I noticed that as well.. 10 sumthings or so, and eight sumthingothers. No wonder we are confused, we've just lost another millionth of a second off our day, our internal clocks will be adjusting...

Same people that lost their jobs writing the software for the Mars Polar Lander are now writing the news.

shudder to hear the news

FAQ info:

http://www.livescience.com/13187-japan-earthquake-tsunami-science-faq.html

Nice concise summary, thanks!

Anybody else in the U.S. (or anywhere, for that matter) continually annoyed at the dumbing down of such natural disasters by major media outlets? I realize that not everyone in the listening/watching audience has a firm grasp of science, and that the talking heads may have only 60 seconds to dissect something as complex as subduction zones and plate tectonics, but the explanations I've been hearing make me want to alternately cringe and scream.

Tsunami formation is where 'they' often foul up, and Usbport's linked article puts it so succintly:

The height of a tsunami wave is influenced by the ground's vertical movement, so changes in the seafloor's topography can either amplify or dampen a wave as it travels along.

OK, very succint, but that one sentence is better than anything I've heard in the media.

You following here?

Thanks, hadn't caught up with that one since early afternoon. Quick Google search turns up no confirmation of a meltdown, but many instances of 'possible' and 'potential'.

I do not believe the 8cm figure at all, much less the larger ones.

Where were any alleged calculations?

There is a lot of info, including up-to-date calculations, available on the USGS website.

One geologist agrees that an 8-foot shift seems reasonable, stating that one gps sensor was moved 8 feet.

I, too, wondered about the 8 cm shift in the pole. I can believe that figure, since the pole wanders that much or more all the time, but I looked and have not found where the 8 cm shift was determined.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_wander

There is an interesting interview (audio only, mp3) with 2 geologists here:

http://gallery.usgs.gov/audio/corecast/ep147/03112011_147_japan_earthquake.mp3

I noticed the axis shift this morning when I got up!

It looks like the Earth has shifted exactly one hour ahead here in Florida.

;-)

Saying that 'the Earth had moved for you' is a rather iffy thing to do on CR4. If we cannot give give diret help, we can give humour. Inapt, yes, but it works well as a survival technique.

In such a terrible situation, I doubt that any member would not try to help. It's one of those situations when people must forget their 'experteze' and just pick up a shovel. Engineering is not always hi-tech, it's folk looking at a situation and finding practical solutions.

Kudos to those who are keeping this in the 'headlights'. This event is not nearly enough highlighted on CR4.

........someone compared the flooding and damage to Katrina.

Two big exceptions noted by me.....NO WIDE SPREAD LOOTING!

..... Rescue and military personnel acted almost immediately !

"NO WIDE SPREAD LOOTING"

And no major panic. It's a different culture, and we "superior" Americans can take a lesson from the way the Japanese have reacted.

This will be a MAJOR economic setback for a country with an extremely fragile economy.

You bet.

I did business for over 15 years with one of their largest netting manufacturers. Their warehouse was destroyed by an earthquake near Kobe (1990's?).

They hand trucked my materials 3 kms to another dock and spent a month apologizing for the inconvenience. Old Skool business managers..... all were kids during WWII.... they all were raised to assess the situation first and then react to it . ....not panic or spend endless weeks and months figuring out who is to blame.

'Looting' would never cross their minds.

The response groups, and population, have had a lot of practice.

I saw a 'talking head' on a 'news desk' the other night who was amazed when told tsunami is a Japanese word. It, (the head), also thought this was the 2nd tsunami, ever.

It would be funny, except they 'control awareness and information' to their level of comprehension. Which is why we are struggling to get any.

Some order is apparently coming back to those areas not totally destroyed in Japan. It will take years to get things back in order.

Here's the latest from my cousin and his wife and 4 kids.

"We will be leaving Nagano prefecture by bullet train at 11 AM local time Monday morning. We'll pass through Tokyo station & change to an express train to Narita airport. Our flight out to Singapore is about 6 PM Monday night."

My sister hosted a foreign exchange student who is now a Tokyo police officer. We haven't heard from him, yet.

2 questions;

1. Can someone explain in Joe 6 pack language, what exactly a MELT DOWN is?

* I know something about cooling the power rods, but all in all, I do not know more than that.*

2. What is the worse case scenario if these power plants continue on this melt down course?

In essence it's an uncontrolled reaction that can't be stopped by any means of cooling or fuel removal from the reactor. Things will melt, but the likelihood of the reactor falling through the floor and traveling down into the earth is not likely. Explosions are likely, due the the extreme heat involved. Radiations leaks are likely.

But nothing like the Soviet reactor at Chernobyl. Different design and safety requirements.

The fact that they are pumping seawater into the site means they have lost all the normal back-up systems. The reactor is rendered unusable when exposed to seawater. It's a last ditch effort to control the reaction, at all costs.

What is the sea water actually cooling, the rods or the reactor itself?

What is different about these reactors as opposed to the Chernobyl one?

Thank you.

Chernobyl was a water cooled, graphite moderated reactor. They were considered unstable by most western observers. And operator error produced the disaster at Chernobyl.

The Japanese reactors use a different approach to controlling the heat and reactions.

I'm now over my head and will wait for a more informed explanation.

And given the effects of a tsunami it would seem the reactor design is poor

sea defences inadequate

back up generators to low, why didn't they place them back up the hill side

why didn't they have emergency water storage in ie a large man made lake up the hill from the site thus negating the need to pump water

why didn't they have CCTV located in or around all safety critical locations

why didn't the site have fixed or mobile water monitors located at strategic points around the site

why didn't the nuke sites have site to site power links to supply each other with power from local nuke sites, so dependence of own power is negated

why wasn't there any way to vent the gases ie hydrogen that builds up inside the buildings

i get the impression that to many assumptions (wrong ones) where made when designing the sites

It has to be said that as far as we know the nuke problem hasn't been caused by the earth quake but they didn't allow for the tsunami of the height that hit the site

I'll add a little more.

The reactor used in Japan is made by GE. I am not sure what they use as a "moderator", but a moderator's job is to catch and/or slow down neutrons that are generated in the processes of fission.

A nuclear fission reaction is when an atom splits and all kinds of particles are emitted from the split, including large amounts of energy (heat). The key ingredient for a sustained nuclear reaction is neutrons.

A nuclear chain reaction is when the first split atom emits a neutron with enough speed that it will split the next atop it strikes, which in tern releases more neutrons that strike other atoms, and so on, and so on, just like the shampoo commercial.

Each uranium atom has lots of neutrons, so when you get enough uranium atoms close enough and you start splitting them a chain reaction happens.

In a nuclear bomb we want to split as many atoms as fast as we can. In a reactor we need to pace that reaction so we do not get into a runaway condition. Unlike a bomb, a runaway condition in the reactor builds up too much heat all at once and things melt. Normally, we use a coolant to scavenge the heat and produce steam to do work.

To keep a reactor running at the "speed" we want so the fission process remains at a tame level, we inject a material into the middle of the core that is designed to capture neutrons. The more of this moderating material we insert, the more neutrons are captured, and the less neutrons are available to initiate more fission of atoms.

The moderator is akin to the gas pedal on your car. It controls the rate at which the core's fission takes place.

A meltdown is when too much heat is built up in the core. Normally, the coolant's job is to pull the heat out of the core so that the core does not overheat.

If the coolant fails or stops, the core will reach temperatures in excess of 1,000°F very quickly and the fuel begins to melt.

When the fuel melts it makes for a messy reactor. Coolant can vaporize, producing excess hydrogen and oxygen when it contacts the casings of the fuel rods, which is the same fuel (hydrogen and oxygen) used by the Space Shuttle to get to orbit. It makes a great bomb if it should ignite. This is why they vent this stuff to keep it from detonating, which it did. The explosion tore open the outer walls of the reactor, but not the containment vessel (as far as we know)

A worse case scenario is when the core melts so much that all efforts to cool it fail and it begins to melt through the reactor vessel, downward into the ground, poisoning everything in its way. This is extremely unlikely with this reactor.

Sea water is used as an emergency coolant, probably along with other material such as boron to help moderate the fission reaction.

The word meltdown is a bit of a misnomer. Just because they say there has been a meltdown does not really tell us the scope of the problem. It is possible to have a meltdown, but keep the reactor vessel intact, which is what they are trying to do right now.

I suspect that some of the fuel in reactor 1 has melted, but not all of it. So the situation is very serious (worse than Three-Mile Island), but not so drastic as it was with Chernobyl.

Thanks for the added information. I figured you'd be able to expand on my feeble effort.

However, Joe six pack probably will have to make a beer run before fully digesting your oratory.

No matter, it's one hell-of-a-mess and I feel sorry for all the suffering and the people who just don't know about their loved ones.

Cheers.

Joe 6 Pack here....aka netmaker.

It was very understandable. Simply put...... but thorough enough for us 'swamp folk' to digest. Sort of like when we forget to adjust the regulator on the crawfish burner and the pot boils over with all of the seasoning. It kills the grass, ( and I killed my wife's magnolia tree), and leaves the ground so super saturated with pepper and salt that you have a dead spot for years....or until you dig up a few buckets of the contaminated dirt and replace the hole with fresh dirt.

Com ca?

Thank you.

Is fallout a solid substance like particles or more like acid rain that has particles or chemicals inside mixed with something like rain?

Can you use plastic sheeting all around your home to keep it from coming in.....

Reason for the question is that we saw some folks were NOT evacuating and choosing to stay near the power plant.

A new analysis of the 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan has found that the intense temblor has accelerated Earth's spin, shortening the length of the 24-hour day by 1.8 microseconds, according to geophysicist Richard Gross at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

_{geophysicists. meh.}

There is also some talk about the risk of future quakes, based on the physical effects of this one on the plate situation:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-13/japan-big-one-may-raise-quake-risk-for-years-help-end-mystery-of-plates.html

It's logical and simple mechanics, that if one section releases the sections on either side are now carrying the stress.

Obliviously that bit was hanging on fairly tightly, hence the magnitude. The shock might have relieved close adjoining sections, but the process is relentless. Forces will build up again.

Could be months, or years, even decades, until something catches, holds then breaks with such force.

What you want is lots of little breaks. Will it be like that? No idea. Nor have they.

So if it all go's quiet for a number of years - watch out.

Has any of these articles explained how net mass was shifted toward the earth's center, which actually would correspond to an ice skater foreshortening his/her arms?

No.

And if Japan over-rode by any height you would see it in the coastline 'growing'.

I'd say it's a momentary inertial reaction - if anything.

More likely a ploy for 'media involvement' based on one momentary deviation of another 'floating GPS' unit.

Here's an interesting NOAA animation showing tsunami propagation from the earthquake's epicenter.

So?

The day length varies by +/- 0.01 sec depending on which way the prevailing winds are impinging on mountain ranges.

So?