When I was in japan the earthquakes were oddly exciting rather than scary, had three different ones while I was there that visibly shook rather heavy objects around. Two being in a building and one outside. It was rather interesting seeing things shift around leaving a permanent imprint that there was in-fact an earthquake and it wasn't some kind of illusion when earthquakes these size couple of decades ago would cau…
I was secretly hoping for a 'proper' earthquake when I was living in Japan. Obviously I didn't want anybody to get hurt or anything to get damaged, but I only ever got to feel a few ~M3 earthquakes which were just slight bumps I felt when laying in bed.
Strong earthquake hits northern Japan, tsunami warning issued
161–168 of 168 posts
Re: Strong earthquake hits northern Japan, tsunami warning issued
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
People were freaking about the July megaquake prophecy and nothing happened. Trying to time it is silly, just chill and enjoy your stay, you'll probably be fine.
Megaquake is following a major earthquake is well documented. This is not silly prophercy stuff. Parent was talking about that case.
Re: Strong earthquake hits northern Japan, tsunami warning issued
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Basically every language works that way? You can say underquake in English if you like, doesn't have to be Greek. In fact, it might make sense to pick a widely understood language rather than one with ~13 million speakers
"Hypocenter", like "epicenter", is English, not Greek. These words, like many words in English today, are made of Greek components, which is why kids are taught in grade school English class about Latin and Greek roots. No, not every language works this way, because not every language uses Latin and Greek root-words like this.
> not every language uses Latin and Greek root-words like this
I was responding to the text above where the person was amazed you can build/recognise a new word from parts. Idk who made the statement you're negating
Re: Strong earthquake hits northern Japan, tsunami warning issued
#164To think that these are happening more and more around the world and the USA just lost 9 detection stations near Alaska because of NOAA budget cuts. There was also the giant tsunami in the middle of nowhere this year. https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2025/11/01/state-seismolog...
Re: Strong earthquake hits northern Japan, tsunami warning issued
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you intended this to be a validation of the idea that small quakes relieve stress and therefore lower the chance of a large quake. The above link does not answer that question. It is relating stress release to "fault strength", or the maximum shear stress that can be withstood by the fault. There is an incidental relationship with depth that plays a role. The video linked nearby (on criticality) also does not…
EQs are a release of energy. That energy is stored as stress prior to release. There is a finite amount of stored energy at any given time. So the statement "EQs release stress" is true and it follows that adding the modifier "small" to the front doesn't change this. It should also be immediately apparent that it would be very surprising if there were not statistical implications as a result of this. So surprising in…
(Related, and profound apologies for the fb.com link: https://www.facebook.com/DLJCSS/posts/small-quakes-do-not-pr...)
(Source: Work with Earth science domain experts in $dayjob, and am often surprised when my basic intuitive arguments turn out to be wrong.)
Re: Strong earthquake hits northern Japan, tsunami warning issued
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
EQs are a release of energy. That energy is stored as stress prior to release. There is a finite amount of stored energy at any given time. So the statement "EQs release stress" is true and it follows that adding the modifier "small" to the front doesn't change this. It should also be immediately apparent that it would be very surprising if there were not statistical implications as a result of this. So surprising in…
For real: Earth science is complex. When you have domain experts literally saying the opposite of your guesses, in a section of an outreach webpage devoted to "Myths," reconsider your position. (Related, and profound apologies for the fb.com link: https://www.facebook.com/DLJCSS/posts/small-quakes-do-not-pr... ) (Source: Work with Earth science domain experts in $dayjob, and am often surprised when my basic intuitive…
Your link addresses a different claim than the one I made. So far we have release of stress (true by definition), statistical correlation (foreshocks and aftershocks), and reduction of a future event (your link).
As to objections about relative quantities, earthquake swarms exist. I think it's going to be just about impossible to make claims that are correct while also being applicable to all scenarios. A more limited claim that a particular quake or activity in a particular region does not exhibit a certain sort of relationship is going to be much more defensible.
Re: Strong earthquake hits northern Japan, tsunami warning issued
#167It has recently been a 4th degree one at Vitoria-Gasteiz, in the North of Spain. One of the least probable places you would even think of have an earthquake...
Unfortunately Spain and Portugal have seen quite a few earthquakes over the centuries, some of them quite deadly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Spain
Re: Strong earthquake hits northern Japan, tsunami warning issued
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
A manga book published in 1999 randomly predicted a disaster in March 2011, which seemed to come true with Fukushima. The manga was re-published in 2021 predicting a M8.8 in July 2025, but nothing happened. This is the dumb prophecy part, it was not based on seismology studies, just a shot in the dark to try to seem prophetic again. Countless works of fiction are published every year which predict some future disaste…
Math nazi in me really wants to point out that an event with a 1:1000 probability would be expected to be seen (> 50% probability) in about 700 years, not 1000.