Earth news

400 Dead Dolphins May Be Due To American Sub Sonar Blasts

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The 400 dead dolphins may have died because their brains were blasted by the new type of American sub sonar that is like a billion demons screaming inside of the dolphin's skulls. This sort of marine vandalism must stop. The USA claimed they must do this to "fight terrorists" except there are exactly ZERO terrorists undersea. We are the terrorists!

Rense:

Scientists worked Saturday to try to determine why hundreds of dolphins became stranded in shallow waters and later washed up dead along the shore of a popular tourist destination on Zanzibar's northern coast.

Villagers and fishermen buried the remains of about 400 bottleneck dolphins - which live in deep offshore waters - whose carcasses washed up Friday along a 2.5-mile stretch between Kendwa and Nungwi.

Scientists suspect the animals were disturbed and stressed by some unknown factor or were poisoned before they died, said Narriman Jiddawi, a marine biologist at the Institute of Marine Science of the University of Dar es Salaam.

A preliminary examination of their stomach contents failed to show the presence of squid beaks and otoliths - the ear stones that are found directly behind the brain of bony fishes that are eaten by dolphins, Jiddawi said.

This indicates that the dolphins had either not eaten for a long time or had vomited very severely, she said.

Their general condition, however, appears to show that they had eaten recently since their ribs were not clearly visible under the skin.

I have hyper-sensitive hearing for a human. When I was young, I could hear those "silent" dog whistles. I can hear bats chittering and talking. Once, in downtown Troy, NY, my son and I clutched our ears and cried in pain as a fleet of bats flew wildly overhead. Other people on the street thought we were nuts. They heard nothing.

So I have a lot of sympathy for those creatures who live using sonar. Back when stores first used similar systems to stop shoplifters, it was turned on so high, the first time I encountered it at a mall, the sound reverberating off the glass doors, I passed out. When the ambulance came, I threw up. I was screaming with the pain!

AP:

By AUDREY McAVOY, Associated Press Writer Fri Apr 28, 2:58 AM ET
HONOLULU - The Navy's use of sonar during maritime exercises may have contributed to the mass stranding of more than 150 whales in Hawaii's Hanalei Bay two years ago, government scientists said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the finding — along with information from other studies — has led it to ask the Navy to reduce its sonar's power during exercises planned this summer in Hawaiian waters. It also asked the Navy to turn off its active sonar when the whales come within a set distance.

Those poor dolphins! If it is true that the US sonar destroyed their brains, dolphins don't throw up so easily, they gulp things down. For all 400 to eject their stomachs, violently, the contortions they went through as their brains were pounded to insanity.

For years and years, I have been very upset about the sonar situation. These splendid creatures who have just as much as right to live as us, dying, suffering, hearing the shrieks of a billion demons ringing inside their heads which amplify the sonar....this cruelty is so out of whack with our own needs! The excuse of looking for terrorists where there have been absolutely no terrorists takes the cake.

Zanzibar tourist information for swimming with these dolphins that died this week.

Kizimkazi Mosque & Dolphin Tour

Situated on the southern point of the island, Kizimkazi fishing village is home to several schools of bottle-nosed dolphins which can often be sighted following a short boat trip from the village. If you are lucky, you may be able to swim quite close to the dolphins which can be a very rewarding experience. Kizimkazi is also the site of a 12th century mosque, the earliest evidence of Islam in East Africa, and is thus worth a visit for both natural and cultural reasons.

I have swum in the ocean with dolphins. Not at a resort, it is just that I swim a lot in the ocean and swim like a dolphin or a sea otter and so these animals approach me in a friendly way. They are truly blessed creatures, joyful, playful.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Scientists Use Olive Branch To Accurately Date Great Thera Volcanic Eruption

Elaine Meinel Supkis

All my life, I have thought about the end of the Minoan civilization. As a child, I would study pictures of that delightful people's art and culture. Everything ended in a terrible instant when the volcano of Thera island blew up. Now, using an olive branch preserved in the volcanic tuff, scientists have pinned down the date of this terrible catastrophe.

Space.com:

About 3,500 years ago, a volcano on the Greek island of Thera erupted with such force that it created a column of smoke and debris 23 miles high and flung ash to places as far away as China, Greenland and the western United States.

The blast also triggered 40-foot-high tsunamis that slammed into the island of Crete nearly 70 miles away and likely contributed to the downfall of its famed Minoan civilization.

Despite its widespread influence, the precise date of the eruption has been hard to pin down. Some archeologists have put the event at around 1500 B.C., based on similarities between pottery shards found in Akrotiri, a town buried in ash by the blast, and pottery in Egypt from a period known as the New Kingdom.

Radiocarbon experts, meanwhile, have consistently dated the event to about 100 years earlier.

This event is buried deep inside of many myths and religions. Despite pretending the god-entites love us, we know deep inside, the gods are wielders of death. Lightning and explosions are their favorite manifestations. This is why I prefer Zug/Pegasus, the horse that carries lightning bolts since I seem to get hit regularily, it seems.

Another study by geologist Walter Friedrich of the University of Aarhus in Denmark and colleagues, uses a single branch to pinpoint the time of death for an olive tree believed to have been buried alive during the eruption. Together, the two studies strongly suggest an eruption date of somewhere between 1600 and 1660 B.C.

About the olive branch, Manning told LiveScience, "It's the only direct piece of evidence that's come along since the beginning of the debate.”

A pillar of smoke during the day and a pillar of fire at night. Day becomes night. The sea pulls back, fish, bottom crawling animals, shell creatures, exposed, helpless, the people on the shores, full of wonder, then a deafening roar, like a god gone mad, a howl of tremendous rage and the white pillar turns pitch black and a green wall crowned in white appears on the horizon and rapidly moves forwards even as the sun is blacked out by even faster moving clouds that rain hot pumice and lightning bolts shooting in all directions and the sea towers overhead as it roars onshore and everything is swept away and the forests of Lebanon burn fiercely, the trees bending to the ground in the hot wind.

And the one of the most civilized, beautiful expressions of humanity, wiped out in an instant. They invented toilets and designed bathrooms unsurpassed for thousands of years. The elaborate dresses of the vivacious ladies were not exceeded until the rise of the Versaille fashion designers of France. Delicate, lifelike gold jewelry, sophisticated, only after archeologists found these lovely things, could we design duplicates, instects and dolphins, doves and laughing girls on swings, no sharp edges but an Art Nouveau organic curvature, indeed, the art of the fin de sie'cle was awash with art inspired by the Minoans.

The destruction of these delightful people troubled the minds of the survivors. Many Greek myths hark back to those times. The older stories of this Golden Age are filled with longing and dread. Perhaps some of the myths in the Bible refer to this event. Now that we can date it properly, many things can now be better understood.

Leixcorient:

Second Intermediate Period
1650- 1550 BCE. 15th- 17th Dynasty.

The Second Intermediate Period, is just like the first one where the unity of Egypt is lost. The dynasties lost their hold on Nubia and the Nile Delta. Small states took hold of Nubia, while the Hyksos established themselves in the Nile Delta, ruling from Avaris, and would at times represent the strongest force in Egypt.
The Hyksos was a foreign people, the indigenous Egyptians had Thebes as their capital. Finally, the Hyksos were defeated, and a new era of a united Egypt could start.

The great sea power of the Minoan people was utterly destroyed. And so were so many onshore communities. Just like we saw this last year with the Indonesia earthquake/tsunami, whole cities can instantly disappear forever in an eyeblink. The Nile's delta is directly opposite Thera and certainly was laid to waste by the great waves. Now that we have a definite date, it is no surprize, this coincides with the collapse of the Middle Kingdom and it also ushers in the Hyskos invasion from Caanan. Obviously, many populations were displaced and in the power vacuum created by the collapse of the great Minoan empire, many local warlords stepped up their activities. Normally, Egypt would be very hard to invade but not if it had lost its rulers and ruling elites in a great tsunami.

Click here to read an interesting take on what happened to the Minoan people.

1600 BC is also when the Hittites suddenly came broiling out of the Middle East to attack and destroy Babylon. History World:

A group of tribes, speaking Indo-European languages and collectively known as the Hittites, establish themselves as the dominant power in Anatolia. Their capital is at Bogazkoy, a dramatically fortified city on a steep slope among ravines; its walls and towers enclose no fewer than five great temples.

The priest-king who makes this place his capital in the 17th century BC is Hattusilis I. He has ambitions for his people. Moving south and east with his army, he reaches the Mediterranean and continues into northern Syria.

Eager to give his empire full credentials, Hattusilis brings back from Syria a team of scribes, expert in cuneiform. They adapt the cuneiform script to a new purpose, the recording of an Indo-European language, and they lay the foundation for an important state archive at Bogazkoy.

When the clay tablets of this archive are discovered, in the 20th century, they provide the basis for our knowledge of the Hittites.

The elegant writing style of the Minoan was totally lost. When archeologists dug up examples of this writing, it was nearly totally mysterious and many linguistic experts have worked hard to try to decipher them. The Hittites left records, too, in a nearly equally hard to read format but thanks to the efforts of the Egyptians to keep track of everyone's correspondence, we had more than one clue as to how to read cuniform. Many stories about the gods come from these tablets and the earliest incarnations of modern Middle Eastern beliefs are deeply embedded in these ancient stories.

The Hittites were disloged by the sudden, violent end of the Minoan empire and of course, the climate changed for several years, cold and wet, thanks to the world being blanketed by the ash and dust of Thera's volcano. Livestock eating plants dusted with toxins died and social relations failed. Since dust and debris are not uniform but due to prevailing winds, distributed unevenly, the populations spared this toxic dust were able to overwhelm those that were exposed.

The art and culture of the Mediterranean Sea reached incredible heights during the Bronze Age. And this proved to be quite fragile. If there ever was a culture I would have dearly loved to experience, to visit, it would be, hands down, Minoan Crete. I dream of that place. Being a woman, this is especially special. Sigh.

Why is all this important?

AP:

Indonesia's rumbling Mount Merapi is spewing volcanic ash, magma has fully covered its crater, and a powerful eruption could come any day, a scientist said Thursday.

Authorities said, however, they were not ready to raise the alert to the highest level, which requires immediate evacuation of villagers living on the slopes of the 9,700-foot peak.

The mountain, one of the most active in Indonesia, is still in phase two, they said.

"It's close to eruption," said Dewi Sri, a vulcanologist at a monitoring post near Merapi's peak.

"The crater is fully covered by magma," she said, predicting "an enormous and dreadful eruption" within days.

It was a giant eruption in Sumatra 75,000 years ago that nearly annihlated humans. National Geographic:

Scientists believe the Toba explosion 75,000 years ago sparked the last ice age. The 1883 eruption of Krakatau (Krakatoa), the volcano and island between Java and Sumatra, killed more than 36,000 people, many from a large tsunami generated by the explosion.

According to Chris Newhall, a volcanologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Seattle, Washington, much of the magma, or molten rock, formed beneath Sumatra tends to be of a very high silica content. This makes the magma viscous, or thick. The magma is also less dense than the rock it melts from.

"As a result, it tends to rise toward the surface but not easily erupt. It stalls en route and will tend to form large subsurface ponds," he said.

If fresh magma does not erupt immediately but rather pools below the surface, the upper layer of the pool hardens, forming a carapace like a turtle shell, Newhall said. The carapace and viscosity of magma below the shell prevent gasses such as water vapor and carbon dioxide from escaping, allowing the pool to grow more volatile.

Scientists can only guess how great an eruption might be. Alas for us all, Sumatra's volcanoes have a very nasty history of sudden annihilations. They can go from relatively quiet, petty events to literally blowing themselves into oblivion. We can go in a day from global warming into an iceage.

This is one of several billion reasons why we must study our planet closely, very closely. Money spent on killing each other should go into understanding this planet, understanding Her Majesty, Mother Nature. She asks for no churches or palaces, She just wants us to pay attention. Praying to Her doesn't do a thing. Nor does yelling at Her. One can only prepare for the worst for in the end, She always gives exactly that.

Women never had it so good as in Minaon Crete. We had to struggle for another 3,500 years to regain what was lost all in one, vile day.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Antarctica Froze When The Oceans Surrounded The Continent 40 Million Years Ago

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Today, the BBC had an interesting article about Antartica. This set me to wondering about the geology of that continent and which direction it is moving and if the change in the ice sheet's density is triggering a lot of the tectonic plate activity this last decade.

BBC:

By Helen Briggs
BBC News science reporter

The Antarctic ice sheets started building up 30 million years ago
The gateway between the Atlantic and Pacific at the bottom of the globe opened up 41 million years ago, according to a study of old fish teeth.

The research in Science pushes back the date of the forging of Drake Passage to twice as long ago as once thought.

US geologists believe it kick-started the ocean current that swirls around Antarctica, helping to bring about a dramatic cooling effect.

The continent was transformed from lush forest to the icy landscape of today.

"We're saying we now have a date for the opening of the Drake Passage that looks like it's early enough that it may have contributed to the cooling," said Ellen Eckels Martin of the University of Florida, US.

"It illustrates that ocean circulation may play a very important role in climate change."

I checked out what happened 40 million years ago. This is exactly when India finally smashed into Eurasia. Science Week:

1) Is Everest now at its highest point, or was it once even loftier? What was the greatest height attained by the vast highlands of the Tibetan plateau, and when did this occur? New work[1] shows these questions can be tackled -- if not yet answered definitively -- by analysing the isotopic composition of ancient raindrops. With this approach, the authors show that Tibet continuously grew northward over millions of years in response to the thickening of Earth's crust associated with the collision of the Indian and Asian continental plates. The driving forces for this collision are generated deep in Earth's mantle. But the key to unravelling the uplifting history of the central Tibetan plateau is found in lake sediments on the plateau, some of which formed as long ago as 40 million years.

2) In these lakes and their surrounds, changes in the oxygen-isotope composition of surface water (which is controlled by regional climate and elevation) are recorded in sediments. Systematic variations in oxygen-isotope composition across the plateau reveal that spatially variable uplift of the plateau to 4000 meters or more above sea level was intimately linked to the timing and rates of convergence of India and Asia. Rowley and Currie[1] estimate that uplift to 4000 meters was initiated as long ago as 40 million to 50 million years, in the early stages of that convergence.

As it slugged it out up there, the Himalayan plateau began to rise relentlessly and the Himalayan mountains began to soar. And the weather patterns of the Northern Hemisphere changed drastically then this uplift cut off aircurrents that used to flow from the Atlantic to the Pacific. And in the same time frame, Antarctica slid all the way down to the South Polar region and the volcanic island arc that juts out of Antarctica slipped away from the arc of South America's southern most terminal and the ocean raced into the breach.

Also, 40 million years ago, the Pacific Plate suddenly changed direction.Plate Tectonics:

Geologists believe that a huge column of upwelling lava, known as a “plume,” lies at a fixed position under the Pacific Plate. As the ocean floor moves over this “hot spot” at about five inches a year, the upwelling lava creates a steady succession of new volcanoes that migrate along with the plate - a veritable conveyor belt of volcanic islands.

Hawaii itself consists of five connected volcanic mountains that were built by this lava plume rising from the mantle. Kilauea, the world’s largest active volcano, is still rumbling because the island has yet to move completely off the hot spot. The farther the other islands in the chain are from Hawaii, the greater their age. About 150 miles to the northwest is Oahu, which burst out of the sea about 3.5 million years ago. Midway, one of the oldest islands in the chain, was formed between 15 and 25 million years ago.

About 2,000 miles from Hawaii, the chain abruptly veers and extends north as a line of submerged volcanoes known as the Emperor Seamounts. This suggests that the Pacific Plate changed course about 40 million years ago. Where the chain’s long march ends the volcanoes are more than 70 million years old. And, not surprisingly, off the southwestern coast of the island of Hawaii, beneath the ocean surface, Loihi, the next Hawaiian Island, is forming as the Pacific Plate continues its journey over this hot spot.

This is an odd coincidence! One wonders if the impact of India disorganized more than one tectonic plate! Perhaps they sort of cartwheeled around each other and this is when Antarctica suddenly was torn from the same sort of juncture with South America that Central America makes between the two giant continents to its north and south! It has the same sort of "s" shape! Perhaps this connection might break just as dramatically! We know the earth can have lurching events as well as simple inching along events. The change of direction of the Pacific Plate was sudden and there was no "warning signs", namely, one day it was merrily slipping along one baby step after another and then the next day heading off in a totally new direction. So the 40 million year mark is an important event, it changed a lot of things simultaneously.

USGS:

The Rockies form a majestic mountain barrier that stretches from Canada through central New Mexico. Although formidable, a look at the topography reveals a discontinuous series of mountain ranges with distinct geological origins. The Rocky Mountains took shape during a period of intense plate tectonic activity that formed much of the rugged landscape of the western United States. Three major mountain-building episodes reshaped the west from about 170 to 40 million years ago (Jurassic to Cenozoic Periods). The last mountain building event, the Laramide orogeny, (about 70-40 million years ago) the last of the three episodes, is responsible for raising the Rocky Mountains.

The Rocky Mountains ended their most active phases at 40 million years. Which opens the possibility that the cessation of Pacific Plate movement in one direction had an effect on the North American continent. Now, instead of mountain building from compression, we see depressions forming such as the most dangerous one of Yellowstone which is only 2-3 million years old. The Grand Tetons are part of this collapse for they are the outer edge, tilting upwards as Yellowstone and Jackson Hole falls.
Here is a map showing where the most spreading activity vs subduction actions. The Pacific Plate next to South America is spreading much faster than any other sector. What this means for us all is confusing, to say the least. If one looks at all the "future plate movement" maps on the web from various universities the one thing that stands out is how the all see different outcomes. And every day, scientists learn more details about the past which revises possible projections into the future.

Right now, we also see several long-term rift events in Africa and North America and the Middle East. Opposite that are the several new volcanic arcs that run from Alaska to Siberia and the Japan/Philippine ranges down to the spectacular and very dangerous Java/Sumatra arc. Coincidentally, these are where the vast majority of the world's worst earthquakes are. And where a tremendous number of people live for it is also very fertile and auspicious for trade and the growth of exotic spices and foods.

Australia is moving relentlessly north nearly as freely as India moved. For some reason, some continents move faster than others. The Arctic sector is moving the least but we don't know much about Antarctica, is it now free to wander? Will it trigger titanic events far afield? Is this connected with the formation of Yellowstone and other rifting/falling events in the other continents? For I would bet, there is some harmonic unity to these matters.

The volcanoes of Antarctic just might waken again. The arc that juts out like an arm reaching to South America was formed by both uplift and volcanic action. For the last 40 million years, Australia and the Antarctic have been moving rapidly away from each other. What with Australia moving up into the Pacific, will Antarctica sail up into the Atlantic? Or is it, too, going north up into the Pacific? This could be rather messy, like bumper cars heading for the same spot in the middle.

British Army Antarctic Expedition:The Danco Coast has examples of a whole range of rock types. Sedimentary rocks include reworked volcaniclastic ash-fall tuffs (sometimes with fossil bands) and volcaniclastic basin (trench) filling turbidites. These may well have been metamorphosed to varying degrees. Igneous rocks include many primary volcanic rocks and a range of intrusive igneous rocks, which form the bulk of the Danco Coast.

I wonder what would happen if the very tenuous snake-like connection between North and South America breaks? We have a canal already runing athwart the Isthmus! What if the oceans were to pour into each other? Certainly, that would change the weather world-wide just as much as other factors like the rise or fall of CO2 levels, for example. And volcanic activity certainly changes weather systems, too! All I know is, the next several years will be very interesting, if you are a geologist.

Culture of Life News Main Page

7.7 Earthquake In Siberia

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Another major quake, the earth continues to be unusually active after the Great Boxing Day Quake. The least active plate is the one sitting over the North Pole. For some reason, the plates surrounding the South Pole are all moving relentlessly north. I also wonder about the volcano arcs along the north and west rim of the Pacific Plate.

AP:

A major earthquake hit a distant, sparsely populated region of Russia's Far East early Friday, causing unknown damage and possible casualties, an emergency official said. The U.S. Geological Survey and Japan's Meteorological Agency estimated the quake's magnitude at 7.7.

The quake hit at around 12:30 p.m. local time in the Koryak region, nearly 4,350 miles east of Moscow and some 625 miles north of the largest city in the area Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, said Oleg Kotosanov, a duty officer with the regional emergency situations ministry.

Kotosanov told The Associated Press by telephone that there were reports of damage in some villages of the Pacific region, and that emergency officials were flying by helicopter to several locations. Federal emergency officials in Moscow said they had no information about the quake.

Russian news agencies said buildings had been damaged in the coastal village of Tilichiki, including a school, a hospital and an airport. The agencies said there were also some injuries.

Russia's north Pacific coast sits along a major tectonic plate and is frequently hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Most of the time, if an earthquake doesn't hit a city, few bother to notice it. But just like the series of tremblors that hearlded the great quake a year and a half ago, these sorts of quakes are still important if one wishes to know what is going to happen next.

The plate that sits over the Arctic is the one that is moving the least. Indeed, for some reason we still don't fully understand, the general movement of the plates is mostly to the north. The continents are like in a college prank, trying to stuff themselves into a Volkswagen. The Mid Atlantic Ridge is forcing Europe and America apart, unlike the Pacific which is being relentlessly shoved against the Eurasian, North and South American plates.

It is interesting that the juncture where the Pacific Plate pushes against the slowest moving plate up at the Arctic has caused a long arc of volcanoes to form, the Aleutian Island chain. Here is a webpage that discusses the myster of why there are these strange looking volcano arcs, nearly all of which are in the ocean:

The Aleutian Arc abuts the Alaskan mainland behind a deep fiord penetrating the coast to the city of Anchorage. The arc is about 3200km long with approximately 100 volcanoes of which 40 are active giving rise to 170 eruptions in the last 100 years. Flying into Anchorage from Japan one passes one massive snow-covered volcano (to 2800m) after another, some at least emitting steam.

The fore-arc trench is up to 7000m deep, which, while less than the 10,000m of the Tonga Trench, is still a major geographic feature.

This poses a question. Why an arc? The old solution was that a flat shear plane intersects a globe along an arc sector, but a subducting section of oceanic crust is not a flat plate, it has the same curvature as the sector being underthrust? So an arc should follow a great circle. Something to ponder on.
Again we see some tendency for islands away from the continent and closest to Asia to be the least potassic, eg Piip seamount. The variation diagrams below illustrates what now seems to be the invariable wide range of K2O seen in a mature arc.

Scientists studying the chemical and mineral composition of these arc volcanoes see interesting patterns. What this means in the end is still evidently not totally understood. We have many assumptions about the lower levels of the earth but precious little hard data. One reason it pays off to study Mars' geology is, because it is now nearly a "dead" planet, it's past lies open to us to read since it isn't changing constantly. On the other hand, the urgency to study this planet, the most wonderful and important one in the universe, rises, doesn't it?

Yesterday's earthquake is still ongoing. 17 major tremblors in the last 24 hrs. 6.1 on down in severity. The first one was at 47 km deep. The "aftershocks" range from 10 km to 53 km deep. This is a major disturbance. It happened at the point where two volcano arc join. Sort of like this drawing of a traditional Romanesque arch. The event that triggered all this activity, down in Sumatra, was a great tearing in the crust whereas this event is a scrunching of the crust event. This is why California and the entire West Coast shouldn't be lackadaisical about their own situation. The Aleutian chain is responding to direct force. The complex tectonic actions which are at work in the North American west are less direct so it will probably be the last point on earth that will release the energy stored from sudden jerking of the earth last year.

The Mediterranean has been very busy this last week but nearly all the quakes were offshore so they were little noticed. Even the Mediterranean has a number of volcanoes! Indeed, several volcanoes are active, world-wide, it is as if they are whispering and sighing in unison, all of them are troubled in their slumbers and we wonder, which one will Mother Earth use to discharge her vast energy after she has been shrugging and tugging at her robes so much?

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San Bernadino Sector Of San Andreas Worries Scientists

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The San Bernadino sector of the San Andreas faultline hasn't had a significant earth event since 1690. The various sections of California along this great rift valley zone has to catch up with all other parts and since the tectonic plates are constantly moving deep down, this means the rigid upper surface has to suddenly jerk along, belatedly.

Associated Press:

Scientists have been keeping a watchful eye on the southern segment of the San Andreas fault near San Bernardino, which is overdue for a major quake. The last time it snapped was in 1690, producing an estimated 7.7-magnitude quake.

Short of being able to foresee the next San Francisco-like calamity, scientists have focused on buffering the damaging effects of quakes and have made significant strides in taking the Earth's pulse.

Within minutes of a temblor, the USGS posts maps on the Internet showing its epicenter and where the most severe shaking occurred. Scientists constantly keep tabs on seismic strain near sections of faults that haven't ruptured in decades.

They also are working on long-term forecasts that calculate the likelihood of a quake based on historical geologic evidence, in order to help prioritize which buildings and freeways to reinforce.

"Even if we can predict earthquakes," said Mary Lou Zoback of the USGS in Menlo Park, "that won't prevent buildings from falling down."

Studying satellite images of the San Berdino valley, one can see multiple developing disasters. One of the long rang, bad development is the fact that housing humans has eaten up many acres of farmland. When I was very little and we lived off and on in California and have many relatives there, both of my parents being born there and my father's family living there since the Gold Rush, even in my youth there were many acres of farmlands. In the valley system here, it is nearly all gone except the very fringes along the mountain ranges.

When there are great quakes and it is mostly farmland, aside from mudslides which are very dangerous or dam breaks, aside from being badly shaken up, there is relatively insignificant damage. In many countries, poor peasants live in mud huts which kill when they collapse but wooden houses don't fall apart so disasterously in earthquakes and when they do, they are not as likely to kill as mud walls kill.

But when you have dense populations not only do buildings rain destruction onto the crowded streets, fires rage. San Francisco and Tokyo both burned nearly to the ground when they had 7.5+ earthquake events.

Scientists have mapped the major fault lines yet this information, instead of being used by the government to prevent people from placing facilities on them, seem to have little or no effect. Here is a map I drew of San Francisco's development and where the major fault lines lie.
Click on image to enlarge.
This is a 3-D view of the mountains which have rumpled up alongside the San Andreas. Many buildings have been built not only next to this fearful faultline but right smack on top of it where it approaches the Pacific Ocean! Houses also march right up the ridgelines of these mountains and hug the bottoms, perfect zones for landslides. Just mere rainstorms brings down huge sections of this unstable landmass! Yet houses are built or rebuilt again and again in the same destabilized zones with no hinderance from the government.

One can't expect real estate agents to warn people! Like used car salesmen, they just want to unload the properties and collect their fees. Builders don't care, they are often long gone when all hell breaks loose.

So we would expect the government to show some sanity? Of course not.

If anything, they are the chief agents of ignoring obvious geological realities. Just like the levees in New Orleans, they build systems, encourage development, collect taxes and then sit there stupidly as it all falls apart. Over and over, people die because of collective refusal to weigh the obvious dangers of building in inappropriate places. If one expects to have a bottomless purse, one can do this forever but this is seldom a realistic plan.
Click on image to enlarge.
It is a shock to see how many miles of highway systems are built right smack dab on top of the nastiest earthquake fault line in the USA if not the world! The rift line in Indonesia is under the ocean which is why they have so many tidalwave events. In Africa, it is more similar to America, humans evolved rapidly thanks to the difficulties and constant changes created by the Great African Rift Zone's dynamism. So it is with California. Many places on earth get quakes, some devastingly such as the Mississippi valley where the New Madrid fault lurks. But in California, it is complex since it isn't merely one section of the continent is being peeled off like Africa as the hard knife of the Saudi Arabian landmass cuts right into the continent, severing off a long sliver of it, in California, the North American continent is grinding south while the outer edge of the west coast is rapidly hiking north to Alaska and on top of all that, the Australian Plate is pushing the Pacific Plate into North America, which means North America is the anvil, the Pacific is the hammer and the West Coast is the steel being shaped with each blow.

I remember the building of the interstate highway system and the building of most of the higways in California, except for a very small segment built in LA and Pasadena before I was born, everything else came after 1950. I watched that state fill up with people, I lived there off and on from 1953-1972. Each time I come back, I shudder to see the reckless disregard for reality. Only one time did I drive on the lower level of the McAurthur freeway, for example. I yelled, "This is crazy! We are going to all die if there is an earthquake!" and I got off as swiftly as possible. During the World Series, when the earthquake came and dropped it, I didn't need to see the damage reports, I yelled, "Oh my god, everyone on that stupid highway has been crushed to death." And most of the deaths from that relatively mild event were from that highway.

So why did they build it there and in that fashion? Why weren't the architects and engineers responsible for that crime arrested? They had no excuse. I was only 16 when I drove on that highway segment and I was nearly hysterical, trying to get away from it and for years, I warned people to avoid it totally, not to even drive on top and only that in an extreme emergency! I had no college degree, all I had was a lifetime listening to geologists and my parents talk about where to site observatories (stability is important! Heh---Mt. Wilson and Palomar! Gads!!!!)

Kitt Peak was chosen precisely because it was geologically stable compared to the California observatories.

But what I am saying is, there was no excuse for the McAurthur disaster. And god help all the poor people who will be driving on the highways that lie directly on top of the San Andreas. When the land decides to shift north or south by 25 feet in less than 6 seconds, it will be total chaos and virtually all traffic will be overturned or flying through the air since it will be moving rapidly when the land suddenly decides to join the fun.

The housing built at the point where the San Andreas plunges into the sea is doomed, too. I don't care how you build, it was all open farmland back in 1900. Ergo: no one died there. Today, it is dense streets and the nub end of some major highways and tons of houses. None of which should have been built there! I looked at aerial photos of SF from 1943 and it was still open farmland back then. This means 100% of the roads and houses were built long after geologists had identified and mapped the San Andreas! The real estate developers wanted to make money off the cheap farmland and the government gave them the green light and thousands of people will die or lose everything they own because the chances of that sector surviving a 8+ event on this particular neighborhood is 0%. What doesn't get torn apart will burn. There is no way any water systems will be functional. And we know from our recent experiences with New Orleans, the government is going bankrupt and is not functional at all.

San Francisco had its last jerk forwards exactly 100 years ago. Normally, it jerks along with 6+ events every 50 years or so. The longer it doesn't jerk, the more violent the event. This means San Bernadino could have a 50' jump when it decides to let loose! All the earthquake building codes are for much smaller events. There is no building code for a 50' jump event. As I have pointed out, the Great Boxing Day Quake has caused so many changes in the earth's crust, it has been writhing from the event for over a year. The rate of 6+ events is much higher than normal and usually, 8+ events happen once every five years not every 3-6 months! And 5+ events are nearly DAILY OCCURANCES.

Imagining that hyper-active California will not participate in all this is insanity. The only question for the next five years is, how many segments of the San Andreas are going to blow.

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100th Anniversary of Great SF Quake

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Today is the centenary of the Great San Francisco earthquake. Once again, all parts of the many fault systems of California face tremendous pressures. The shaking of this earth launched by the Great Boxing Day Quake are not finished, not by a long shot. Scientists, drilling 2 miles deep, tapping into the fault zone itself, hope to learn more about how the earth behaves.

As this drawing shows, the entire San Andreas doesn't slip all at once. The Great Quake was unusually long as well as fast moving, the energy from the break unzippering nearly 100 miles of it moving at 8,500 mph. This is tremendous energy which was dwarfed by the energy shot out of the recent earthquake in Indonesia which was whole magnitudes worse.
Courtesy of the USGS

"Our first indication of entering the fault zone was a modest increase in drilling rate starting at about 2:30," according to the project's online daily log. The shift marked entry into a less rigid area of rock.

Sensors also picked up increases in radon, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, all signs that the fault zone had been penetrated.

Some animals can sense quakes because of the gasses, I am presuming. Insects. for example, can sense the coming of storms and earthquakes, especially ants and bees. My grandfather told me that if I suddenly noticed lots of ants scurrying around, to expect a shake. He lived in California for many years. I don't know if this can be scientifically proven.
The record of three major quakes recorded at the Parkfield San Andreas zone show a remarkable mirror image each event has made. Same exact shape, each time. This is just one of many mysteries of the San Andreas.

Associated Press:

Fossils have long provided snapshots of the human family tree, but a new find in Africa gives scientists a kind of mini home movie showing man's primal development.

Because the 4.2-million-year-old fossil is from the same human ancestral hot spot in Ethiopia as remains from seven other human-like species, scientists can now fill in the gaps for the most complete evolutionary chain so far.

"We just found the chain of evolution, the continuity through time," said Ethiopian anthropologist Berhane Asfaw, co-author of the study being reported Thursday in the journal Nature. "One form evolved to another. This is evidence of evolution in one place through time."

The species, Australopithecus anamensis is not new, but its location is what helps explain the giant leap from one early phase of human-like development to the next, scientists say. All eight species were found in a region called the Middle Awash.

It seems, humans originated and evolved for several million years in the African Great Rift Zone. Perhaps we are naturally attracted to the fuana and flora of such environments which is why we are so attracted to California and consider it to be a very beautiful place!

Click here to see United States Geological Survey movie of San Andreas events.

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Another 4+ Magnitude Earthquake On San Andreas Fault

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Another 4+ magnitude event on the infamous San Andreas fault, this time south of San Francisco, right on the heels of the five similar events which happened unnoticed in the ocean on the same fault line, just this last week! The other side of the Pacific had a terrific number of earthquakes of even greater magnitude today. Little time remains for preparing for the inevitable.

IRIS:

01-APR-2006 12:26:00 36.52 -121.10 4.3 4.5 CENTRAL CALIFORNIA
29-MAR-2006 01:36:22 35.62 -117.59 4.1 10.3 CENTRAL CALIFORNIA
26-MAR-2006 01:56:35 40.25 -124.46 4.2 10.0 NEAR COAST OF NORTHERN CALIF.
25-MAR-2006 23:23:55 43.94 -128.16 4.5 10.0 OFF COAST OF OREGON
25-MAR-2006 20:14:00 41.69 -126.61 4.7 10.0 OFF COAST OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
25-MAR-2006 03:42:33 41.81 -125.97 4.1 10.0 OFF COAST OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
25-MAR-2006 03:16:05 41.78 -126.03 5.0 10.0 OFF COAST OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
22-MAR-2006 22:16:12 60.04 -77.32 4.0 18.0 NORTHERN QUEBEC, CANADA
22-MAR-2006 17:24:32 48.83 -115.20 4.2 8.0 MONTANA
22-MAR-2006 05:42:01 40.73 -126.31 4.9 10.0 OFF COAST OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

Map here

Detailed map of faults in Northern California here

Very busy, unlike last year which most of the earthquakes were clustered along Indonesia where the first big blow out occured, it is relatively quiet there and now, Australia, unhinged, has been shoving with increasing force against the Pacific Plate, causing increasing earthquakes along the entire rim.

I was too busy on March 29th to write about the 4.2 earthquake that was centered exactly on China Lake in Death Valley. I lived for a brief while on the Navy base there when I was extremely little. It is a deep depression between the walls of two mountain ranges that are rising even as China Lake falls. For it is part of the tearing of the Great Rift Valley of California. This was a bad sign because it, too, was at the 10 km level, an interesting level, the same that the Great Boxing Day Quake was at, there are lots of earthquakes at exactly this level, it seems, the crust has some important intersections at that level, ones that are prone to earthquakes.

All of Central America facing the Pacific is shaking pretty steadily all this week, too, it is at the opposite end of the gigantic complex of the Great California Rift Valley, south of the Gulf of California which was once land but sank lower and lower as the coast slid north, eventually all of central California will be the same, eons from now.

Today's quake was not deep at all, it was extremely superficial. This is not a good sign. There are many years of tension built up along all parts of the San Andreas. The great building boom in California has been due to the fact that the dragon in the earth has been snoozing but now it is awake as are all the dragons in the earth, they writhe under our feet and snort.

We ignore them at our peril.

Just the other day, some poor, unfortunate Iranians died in a series of moderate quakes, all under 7 mag. But due to poor housing, there was a death toll. Our government distainfully said we would provide aid even as we snap at them, militarily. We should be careful about this. For the same entity that killed them and lay many of our most expensive communities into ruin, too. And we should be bracing ourselves for this inevitability, not running around, trying to start wars everywhere.

But no one listens to me.

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