NASA's twin Stereo spacecraft Behind and Ahead captured rare footage of the Sun erupting over a 30 hour period. The footage is from September 26-27, 2009. Take a look:
Here is some video footage of the tsunami from Tuesday's powerful magnitude 8.0 earthquake near American Samoa. The earthquake created a tsunami in the Somoas that flattened villages and swept cars and people out to sea. The tsunami hit in the middle of the harbor of the capital of Pago Pago. CNN has some photographs of the damage here. Take a look:
The Mola Mola Can Gain Over 60 Million Times Its Birthweight
This Mola Mola or Ocean Sunfish is one of the largest and stangest animals found in the sea. The Mola Mola is the world's largest bony fish. As the National Geographic video below describes it - the Mola Mola looks like a "massive swimming head." The Mola Mola can weigh up to 4,000 pounds. It can gain over sixty million times its birthweight. For more on this strange fish check out the listings on Fishbase.org, OceanLight.com and Wikipedia. The Ocean Sunfish website also has lots of facts, photos and news.
Grim Reports From Gizo in Solomon Islands Following Tsunami
A Sydney Morning Heraldstory reports that there has been considerable destruction in Gizo, a popular diving tourism destination, from the tsunami that resulted from the 8.0 earthquake near the Solomon Islands. There are people injured, people missing and some "2000 and 3000 homeless" according to one person cited in the article.
The country's Prime Minister's office reports that at least six people have been killed and several are missing as "10-metre-high waves continue to crash [on] coastal villages".
Reports from police at Gizo - the capital of the western province and a popular destination for divers - said water now completely covered the lower areas of the town, while waves continued to pound the nearby towns of Noro and Munda.
About 50 homes in Gizo - just 45 kilometres from the centre of the quake - had reportedly been flattened and boats had been washed into the town.
There were reports that large waves had penetrated 500 metres inland, wiping out villages.
This report is just from Gizo. Damage and fatalities from the earthquake and from tsunamis has also been reported in other parts of the Solomon Islands and in Papa New Guinea.
This image of the Sun was taken with NASA's Stereo's Extreme Ultraviolet Imager. NASA's Stereo orbiters are studying the Sun as this BBC article describes.
The Stereo orbiters, which are nearing their final positions, will study violent solar eruptions known as Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs).
CMEs hurl energetic particles at Earth that can disrupt power grids and satellite communications.
Stereo will give scientists information they need to forecast "space weather".
The new panoramic views, which stretch from the Sun to the Earth, are created by combining images from a suite of telescopes onboard the two spacecraft. Their data will allow scientists to track "solar fronts".
LiveScience.com reports that waves of frozen ice known as ivus recently moved onto an Alaskan road creating large ridges full of car-sized ice chunks. One of the ridges was 20 feet high.
Two ice surges, known to Alaska Natives as ivus, stunned residents who had never seen such large blocks of ice rammed ashore.
"It just looked like a big old mountain of ice,'' said L.A. Leavitt, 19, who left his nightshift job at the city to check out the ridges.
Ivus are like frozen tsunamis and crash ashore violently. They have killed hunters and are among the Arctic's most feared natural phenomena.
The ivus crashed ashore Tuesday after strong winds from Russia and eastward currents began pushing pack ice toward Barrow last weekend, said North Slope Borough disaster coordinator Rob Elkins.
By late Monday, thick, old sea ice known as multiyear ice had shoved younger, thinner ice onto shore.
We found some photographs of ivus, also called ice shoves, here on a website belonging to Andy Mahoney.
The California Seismic Safety Commission has issued a report that says a large tsunami is a serious threat to human life in California. A tsunami could also have a devastating impact on the state's economy. The report includes analysis based on the deadly 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia. The report found the the casualty count could be very high from a large tsunami.
Casualties. As the 2004 Sumatran tsunami amply demonstrated, a large tsunami poses a major risk to human life, primarily from flooding and debris impact. Evacuation is possible and can save many lives if carried out properly. However, a poorly coordinated evacuation can actually put people in harm’s way. Moreover, the short time frame between event and tsunami for local events requires that the local population be aware enough of the appropriate action to evacuate without official notification. Of the five Pacific states, California has the largest population exposed to tsunami risk. NOAA has estimated that more than one million people in California live within coastal areas vulnerable to tsunami inundation (the rushing in of the water causing flooding and battering by debris). That number does not include one million or more visitors to California's beaches on any given summer day.
A PDF version of the report can be downloaded from the California Seismic Safety Commission's website. The report is interesting because it takes a close look at the water depth near the California coast to determine which parts of the coast will see the biggest tsunami. The report says that the Cascadia subduction zone will produce the California's largest tsunami. A LiveScience.com
article about the report noted the potential huge financial impact a powerful tsunami could have on the coast of California.
Along with threatening lives and property, a giant tsunami would strike an economic blow to the state, given the vulnerability of its ports, the report said.
If a tsunami shut down the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach for two months, the economic loss could reach $60 billion. The ports make up the third busiest port in the world, but its docks and terminals are only about nine feet above the water. A separate report issued March concluded a Southern California tsunami could cost at least $42 billion.
A massive wave higher than that could cause extensive damage, the report said. Thousands of pleasure boats and other crafts could come loose, and vehicles, equipment, containers and tools could get washed away.
The report also found that there are flaws in the warning system, evacuation plans and building codes -- all of which will need to be improved so that California can avoid a massive loss of life like the world saw from 2004's tsunami.
Last December's massive Tsunami may also have spread invasive alien wildlife to other countries where they could pose a threat to the local ecosystem. Red Nova reports that the mesquite shrub and prickly pears may have been spread into Sri Lanka because of the tsunami.
Nearly six months after the disaster that killed more than 31,000 people in Sri Lanka, studies have found that the tsunami waves have pushed seeds of so-called alien invasive species from their coasts farther inland on the tropical island, the United Nations Environment Program said.
"In some areas, including important national parks, the wave has encouraged the spread of alien invasive species, such as prickly pears and salt-tolerant mesquite," the agency said in a statement.
Last year's massive earthquake near Sumatra which generated the killer tsunami was also the longest earthquake ever recorded. CNN reports that the quake released energy equivalent to a 100 gigaton bomb. The magnitude of the quake has also been increased from the original estimate of 9.0 to somewhere between 9.1 and 9.3.
"Normally, a small earthquake might last less than a second; a moderate sized earthquake might last a few seconds. This earthquake lasted between 500 and 600 seconds," said Charles Ammon, associate professor of geosciences at Penn State University.
The quake released an amount of energy equal to a 100 gigaton bomb, according to Roger Bilham, professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado.
The article also says that the earthquake was picked up all over the world -- everywhere that scientists had instruments they were able to detect the massive earthquake.
A major earthquake with a magnitude of 8.7 has struck off the coast of Sumatra -- very close to the deadly earthquake that generated the killer tsunami last December. Tsunami warnings followed the quake and evacuations have taken place in Thailand in elsewhere. So far there has been no report of a major tsunami. However, damage from the quake has killed 296 people in early estimates and destroyed numerous homes and buildings. MSNBC.com has an interesting webpage of citizen reports -- the quake was felt strongly hundreds of miles from the epicenter. Use this link to keep up-to-date on current reports about the
earthquake.
The recent post-Tsunami discovery of animal carvings and ruins
in India has led to more discoveries underwater off the
coast of India. In the ocean divers found large stone structures
which the scientists believe are man-made and which could
be a significant archeaological discovery. The BBC reports that
some archaeologists think it find might be the ancient, mythical
city of Mahabalipuram, which is said to have been flooded in legends.
