2004 Earthquake & Tsunami Sciencific facts

[GGKoul]

The following come from http:/earthquake.usgs.gov/

Tsunami Animation in 10 min intervals - http://staff.aist.go.jp/kenji.satake/animation.gif


FAQ: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqinthenews/2004/usslav/neic_slav_faq.html

If anything, read these two.

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Question: How much energy was released by this earthquake?

Answer: Es 20X10^17 Joules, or 475,000 kilotons (475 megatons) of TNT, or the equivalent of 23,000 Hiroshima bombs.


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Question: What effect did this earthquake have on the rotation of the earth?

Answer: Richard Gross at JPL has modeled the coseismic effect on the Earth's rotation of the December 26 earthquake in Indonesia by using the PREM model for the elastic properties of the Earth and the Harvard centroid-moment tensor solution for the source properties of the earthquake. The result is:

change in length of day:

[lucindrea]

i thought it was cool that because one plate slid under another that the size of the earth got slightly smaller and hence spins a bit faster ( like spinning around with a bucket of water , pull it in closer and you spin faster ) .... ( tecnhicly one didnt slide under the other , they slid past but closed a gap that was their before )... of course this change is so minor it's only mentionable because we can mesure it .. fact is the earth "wobles" slightly on it's axes anyway and changes like this happen more often than you would think ( passing astriod a few million miles away could do it , not to mention the lineing up of jupitur , saturn and neptune every 90 or so years also has an effect )  .. if you think of a top that's at the end of it's spin , the part that touches the ground will go in little circles , earth does that also , just takes about 50,000 years to compleate a circle ( ironicly this is also the legenth of time between ice ages , but nothing says they are related )