Saturday, May 7, 2011

Weekend diversion: Japan tectonic shift infoporn

- by New Deal democrat

I'm a sucker for science and for infoporn, so I found the below two images really interesting.

The first shows the location of all earthquakes near Japan beginning just before the March 11 megaquake. It's really easy to see exactly how big a portion of the earth's crust shifted:



The large plurality of aftershocks in the last few weeks have been at the southwest edge of the wedge shown above, so I guess we know where the increased pressure is accumulating next. (To see this in time-lapse, google "Japan quake map:).

The second image shows how far each section of the above wedge moved (see index at lower right). The larger dark red dots are the locations and intensities of various aftershocks:



The biggest move appears to have been about 80 feet!