https://archive.is/wwMMM
"If the ocean floor had a nervous system, it might look something like this:
thousands of miles of fiber-optic cables connected to sensors set atop the
fault lines where Japan’s earthquakes begin. Completed in June, this system
aims to stave off devastation like that of 2011—when a relentless
six-minute-long temblor was followed by a 130-foot tsunami that reached speeds
of 435 miles per hour and pounded cities into rubble. Delayed alerts gave some
communities less than 10 minutes to evacuate and only warned of much smaller
waves, based on inaccurate earthquake readings. Nearly 20,000 people died, with
thousands more injured or missing. Reactor meltdowns at the flooded Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear power plant irradiated the surrounding land and spilled
radioactive water into the ocean.
The undersea, magnitude 9.0 “megathrust” earthquake—the worst in Japan’s
recorded history—began in the Pacific seafloor 45 miles off the country’s
eastern coast. Land-based sensors detected its first shock waves but couldn’t
immediately provide clear readings of its magnitude or that of the tsunami it
created. Mere months later, Japan began expanding its earthquake-detection
system to cover the ocean floor. With the system’s completion last month, Japan
has become the first country to achieve direct, real-time monitoring of entire
subduction zones—adding minutes and seconds to evacuate people and brace
crucial infrastructure for impact.
But the advanced warning system is not the entire story, says seismologist
Harold Tobin, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. “By wiring up
the offshore fault zone, we’re constantly able to listen to it,” he says. “That
means we can detect all sorts of subtle signals that tell us how faults work,
such as the storage of stress and how it starts to be released at the beginning
of an earthquake.”"
Via
What Could Go Right?: Pressing Forward
https://theprogressnetwork.org/trump-media-landscape/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
