Magnitude 6.3 earthquake hits off New Zealand’s North Island west coast — USGS
Magnitude 6.3
Date-Time Friday, December 07, 2012 at 18:19:08 UTC Saturday, December 08, 2012 at 07:19:08 AM at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location 38.334°S, 176.044°E
Depth 167.2 km (103.9 miles)
Region NORTH ISLAND OF NEW ZEALAND
Distances 18 km (11 miles) SE of Tokoroa, New Zealand
27 km (16 miles) SW of Rotorua, New Zealand
39 km (24 miles) N of Taupo, New Zealand
72 km (44 miles) S of Tauranga, New Zealand
Mt Tongariro has erupted this afternoon. GNS Science confirmed the eruption, at the Te Maari crater, shortly after 1.30pm. Two bus drivers from Nimon and Sons had reported back to their base that they could see a plume two kilometres high, a spokesman said. Ruapehu area commander Steve Mastrovich said no-one was injured by the eruption and those on the track were safely making their way down the mountain. There was no warning leading up to the eruption, which lasted four minutes, Mastrovich said. “It was fine ash which was ejected and one plume came out then dissipated towards Turangi … I have been told by somebody at DOC that there were no ballistics ejected,” he said. “There’s no further activity from the crater. It’s settled down to what it was before.” Tamatea Intermediate teacher Lomi Schaumkel said a group from the school was near the Katetahi hot springs when they saw the beginnings of the eruption. “We were right up there next to it. It was just amazing. We were probably only a kilometre away from it. We were right next to one of the signs saying we were out of the danger zone. “We saw all these tourists running away from it. We didn’t stick around long,” he said.There were 90 students, six parents and four teachers on the group, he said. Mangatepopo and Ketetahi roads were closed. Lake Rotoaira resident Robyn Bennett said there was a big, black ash cloud over her house, which was about a kilometre from the eruption site. Turangi i-SITE Visitor Centre consultant Christine Dally said she was not concerned by the smell of sulphur because there have been many sulphur-smelling days since the August eruption. “We’ve had a lot of people ringing us and asking people if it’s safe to go up there. We’re telling them there’s no cause for concern at this stage because it was only a small eruption.” Contact Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge sponsorship and communications director Hayden Dickason said the challenge had a contingency plan in place for Saturday’s event as soon as the alert was raised by GNS Science last week. “[The eruption] looks small at this point, but we’re working with council and we’ve got our safety officer on it. We’ve got a full contingency plan for the event day in case we need to move everyone off the course.” A northerly wind appeared to be blowing the plume away from Lake Taupo and towards the Desert Rd. Wellington Airport spokesman Greg Thomas said the situation was being monitored. Flights NZ2517 and 2504 between Wellington and Taupo had been cancelled. Passengers flying in the central region or east coast of the North Island were advised to keep checking if their flights had been cancelled.
GNS Science has updated the alert on Tongariro to 2, meaning there is “minor eruptive activity”. It had elevated the aviation colour code to red, however, saying “significant emission of ash” into the atmosphere was likely. Massey University is flying two vulcanologists up to study the eruption and already has five students and staff on the ground near the mountain. More scientists are also on stand-by depending on the size of the eruption. Massey University vulcanologist Professor Shane Cronin said they will monitor the ash levels and take samples to determine the likelihood of another eruption. He said the initial suggestion was that the eruption was roughly the same size as the previous Tongariro eruption in August. This is Mt Tongariro’s second eruption this year. The volcano erupted on August 6 for the first time in more than 100 years.
The volcano made famous in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy as the evil wasteland of Mordor erupted on Wednesday on New Zealandâs North Island. No one was injured, but scientists are awaiting further volcanic activity in the area. Mount Tongariro, along with two other volcanoes, is located in the center of the North Island and was asleep for over a century. However, in August of this year the volcano awoke â throwing huge boulders out into a radius of two kilometers, scientists say. The new eruption came by surprise. “It was completely unexpected, there were no warning signs beforehand,” a spokeswoman for GNS Science, the country’s official monitoring service, told AFP. “We were watching [neighboring volcano] Ruapehu waiting for an eruption and instead this came out of nowhere.” On Wednesday around 00:25 GMT, the volcano awoke and started launching massive amounts of ash to the air. Scientists say an ash cloud rose almost three kilometers above the North Island.
CALM EXTERIOR: Research into the Lake Taupo eruption has thrown up new theories on the tectonic forces involved.
A computer-generated graphic of the Lake Taupo eruption.
One of the most intriguing unsolved cases for New Zealand geologists is the ancient Taupo super-eruption.
Victoria University PhD student Aidan Allan has found new evidence that explains how and why the volcano blew.
While the general public is fascinated by the magnitude – the event buried the North Island in debris, with the ash cloud all the way to the Chathams – geologists’ interest lies elsewhere.
They are intrigued because the eruption’s cause isn’t open-and-shut – while most super-volcanoes simply explode, with Taupo there was a short hiatus just as things got underway.
“There were breaks of weeks to months [in the early stages] and then all hell breaks loose,” Mr Allan said.
As geologists worldwide have to make the life-or-death call as to when an eruption has ended, it’s crucial to know why this super-volcano acted the way it did.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
JAKARTA: A strong 6.6-magnitude earthquake rocked Indonesia’s Papua region on Saturday, sending panicked residents running from their homes and schools, officials said.
Authorities said there was no threat of a tsunami, and that the worst-hit area was the town of Ransiki in western Papua, where students attending morning classes ran from school buildings that shook for around a minute.
“We’ve had reports of mostly superficial damage to buildings, but two houses have caved and a church wall has collapsed,” Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) official Yulson Sineri, told AFP.
“There are so far no reports of victims, but there has been some damage to buildings in Ransiki,” he said.
The quake struck at 10:16 am (0116 GMT) at a depth of 30 kilometres (19 miles), 83 kilometres southeast of Manokwari, according to the USGS.
Authorities said the quake was felt in various parts of the West Papua province, on the western tip of New Guinea island.
The BMKG reported the quake’s magnitude at 6.8, with a depth of 10 kilometres.
A hotel receptionist at the Mansinam Beach Resort in Manokwari reported a minute of shaking, but said she saw no damage.
“All our guests panicked and ran out of the building, but they went back after the quake was over and everything is back to normal as far as I can see,” Anita, who goes by one name, told AFP.
The Papua region was struck by two mild aftershocks, while a 6.1-magnitude quake hit off Sumatra island, with no reports of damage or casualties.
Earlier on Saturday, a strong 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck off Indonesia’s Sumatra island on Saturday, the US Geological Survey said, but no tsunami warning was issued.
The quake struck at 5:14 am (2314 GMT Friday) at a depth of about 34 kilometres (21 miles), 427 kilometres southwest of Banda Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra. There were no immediate reports of damage.
Aceh province was shaken earlier this month by two huge earthquakes, triggering an Indian Ocean-wide tsunami alert.
At a magnitude of 8.6, the first of the two quakes was the strongest to hit since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 170,000 in Aceh. No major damage was reported.
The alert level was raised from yellow to orange in March as the volcano became increasingly active. Last week a column of gas and steam approximately 1,200 meters tall extended from its crater.
The national director of the firefighting system warned that there is urgent need for a special contingency plan that outlines tactics to be used in emergency volcanic situations, especially for search and rescue groups. He called for a focus on high risk areas in or near the paths of rivers that originate in the Ruiz, whose levels may be elevated by pyroclastic fragments and the melting of ice.
The director of the Colombian Fire Department Federation in the town of Riosucio explained that local firemen are preparing a plan and educating communities.
In 1985 The Nevado del Ruiz erupted, wiping out the town of Armero and killing 25,000 people.
A 17,886ft volcano outside Mexico City has exhaled dozens of towering plumes of ash and shot fragments of glowing rock down its slopes, frightening the residents of surrounding villages with hours of low-pitched roaring not heard in a decade.
A white cloud of ash, gas, water vapour and superheated rock spewed from the cone of Popocatepetl high above the village of Xalitzintla, whose residents said they were awakened by a window-rattling series of eruptions.
Mexico’s National Disaster Prevention Centre said that a string of eruptions had ended in the early morning, then started up again at 5.05am, with at least 12 in two hours.
“Up on the mountain, it feels incredible,” said Aaron Sanchez Ocelotl, 45, who was in his turf grass fields when the eruptions happened. “It sounds like the roaring of the sea.”
The white cone of Popo, as most call the mountain, is an iconic backdrop to Mexico City’s skyline on clear days, but its 40-mile distance means even a moderately large eruption is unlikely to do more than dump ash on one of the world’s largest metropolitan areas.
It is a different matter for the villages on the flanks of the volcano, where the quiet of the corn fields and fruit orchards was pervaded by the volcano’s spooky roaring.
“Everyone needs to take this seriously. This buzzing, this roaring isn’t normal,” said Gregorio Fuentes Casquera, the assistant mayor of Xalitzintla, a village of 2,600 people about seven miles from the summit. He said the town had prepared 50 buses and was sending out its six-member police forces to alert people to be ready to evacuate.
Dozens of women lined up in Xalitzintla’s main square to get free face masks and bottles of water. Health authorities were giving out 10 masks and 10 bottles of water to each family, and the surgical-style masks, intended to filter out the fine ash released by the volcano, were becoming common among the town’s students, who are required to wear them in school. Few adults wore them.
President Felipe Calderon said live on national television that authorities are keeping open roads around the mountain, preparing emergency shelters and making sure residents know the latest information about a potential eruption.
Authorities this week raised the alert level due to increasing activity at the volcano, whose most violent eruption in 1,200 years occurred on December 18 2000. More than 30 million people live within view of the volcano, which sits at a point where the states of Mexico, Puebla, and Morelos come together. It has been erupting intermittently since December 1994.
An adverse decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will force parties concerned about the already troubled Vogtle nuclear reactor project in Georgia to file a motion this week in federal court, according to representatives of nine organizations that are seeking to slow down the Vogtle project so that necessary post-Fukushima safety enhancements can be taken into account on the front end – before billions of ratepayer dollars are spent.
In a phone-based news conference held just hours after the NRC rejection of their motion to stay construction, the groups explained that the NRC is violating federal law by issuing the Vogtle license without fully considering important public safety and environmental implications of the catastrophic Fukushima accident in Japan.
The new court proceeding would unfold against a backdrop of more than 30-plus license changes for the Vogtle reactors that Southern Company has said are needed and that the nine groups believe may result in possible delays and cost overruns.
The nine groups are the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, Center for a Sustainable Coast, Citizens Allied for Safe Energy, Friends of the Earth, Georgia Women’s Action for New Directions, North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Nuclear Watch South, and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
They have asked federal judges to order the NRC to prepare a new environmental impact statement (EIS) for the proposed Vogtle reactors that would detail how cooling systems for the proposed reactors and spent fuel storage pools would meet new regulatory requirements in light of the Fukushima accident to protect the site, and nearby communities, against earthquakes, flooding and prolonged loss of electric power to the site.
Post-Fukushima safety requirements may also lead to a change in the economics of the Vogtle project compared to other energy alternatives.
Sara Barczak, High Risk Energy Choices program director, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said: “As evidenced by today’s NRC decision, regulators unfortunately continue to ignore the real ramifications that this risky, expensive nuclear project could have on utility customers and local communities. There are serious safety and economic concerns that will eventually come to a front. Before billions more dollars are spent, post-Fukushima issues should be dealt with in order to best protect surrounding communities and ratepayers’ pocketbooks.”
Diane Curran, Harmon, Curran, Spielberg and Eisenberg, L.L.P., attorney for organizations, said: “The NRC predicts we are going to lose our case in federal court and therefore it refuses to order the suspension of construction at Vogtle while our court case proceeds. But the NRC only digs itself in deeper with this decision, which confirms that the NRC applied the wrong standard in refusing to supplement the EIS for Vogtle to address the environmental implications of the Fukushima accident – whether there was an ‘imminent risk’ of a Fukushima-like accident.
“But that is not the correct standard for whether a supplemental environmental analysis should be required. The standard is whether there is a significant risk of a severe accident sometime during the operating life of the reactor – not tomorrow.”
Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, said: “In denying a stay of the license, the Commission completely ignored our principal concern about the harm that will be caused by going ahead with construction now – that the costs of Fukushima-related backfits that may be required will be much greater after construction starts than if that issue is settled before construction, which is what we ask. The NRC gave short shrift to the interests of the public and specifically the ratepayers who are bearing the risks of Vogtle 3 and 4.
“For instance, the NRC ignored its own statements, as recent as January 2012, that the frequency of earthquakes of a given ground motion in the eastern region is now estimated to be higher than before. The Commission has failed to learn the lessons of the more than one hundred reactors to which it gave construction licenses in the 1970s that were later cancelled at great damage to ratepayers and the public in general in part because safety-related backfits were needed once construction had begun.”
Rev. Charles Utley, Environmental Justice coordinator, Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, said: “As residents living within view of Plant Vogtle, we oppose the siting yet another nuclear plant in our backyard. For years we have participated in public hearings, legal actions and many other tactics to slow, stop and reverse this fundamental injustice. For our children, our homes and our community, we will never give up.”
Curran added: “The decision also vividly illustrates how NRC tries to have it both ways, telling the public to ‘trust us’ that it is taking the Fukushima accident seriously, at the same time it refuses to be accountable to the public by supplementing the environmental impact statement for Vogtle or by even holding a hearing on whether it should be supplemented.
“Attendance at the only hearing the NRC has held on the question of whether the NRC should supplement the environmental study for Vogtle was limited to Southern Nuclear Operating Co. and the NRC technical staff. The NRC would not let the public participate and refused these groups’ request for a hearing on the very same issue. We should have learned from the Japanese accident that such a cozy relationship between industry and government regulators leads to complacency and poor regulatory decisions.”
In February, the groups asked the NRC to delay construction of the new Vogtle reactors until the court decided their case. Since the NRC refused their request today, they will re-file the stay motion on construction with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit later this week. They contend that construction should not be allowed until the NRC decides whether the proposed new reactors should be re-designed to provide for more rigorous protection against earthquakes and extended power outages.
To build reactors that might need to be significantly modified later and extensively backfitted in light of new post-Fukushima regulatory requirements risks wasting ratepayer dollars, causing unnecessary pollution, and even possible abandonment of the project.
On April 18th and 19th, a series of minor CMEs puffed away from the sun. Three of them are heading in our general direction. Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab have prepared an animated forecast track of the ensemble.
According to the forecast, the clouds are going to hit Mercury, Earth, Mars and rover Curiosity en route to Mars. The impact on our planet, on April 22nd around 00:50 UT, is expected to be minor with auroras likely only at higher latitudes.
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Racing outward at about one-quarter the speed of light, “bullets” of ionized gas are thought to arise from a region located just outside the black hole’s event horizon, the point beyond which nothing can escape.
Using the Very Large Baseline Array and Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite, an international team of astronomers have successfully managed to capture a detailed image of the black hole eruption.
The Very Large Baseline Array is a set of 10 radio telescopes that spans 5,000 miles from Mauna Kea in Hawaii to St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It provides astronomers with the sharpest vision of any telescope on Earth or in space.
A black hole in the constellation Scorpius is firing fast cosmic bullets.“If your eyes were as sharp as the VLBA, you could see a person on the moon,” said physicist Gregory Sivakoff of the University of Alberta.
“Like a referee at a sports game, we essentially rewound the footage on the bullets’ progress, pinpointing when they were launched,” said Gregory Sivakoff of the University of Alberta in Canada.
Discovered by NASA’s HEAO-1 satellite in 1977, the system is composed of a normal star and a black hole of modest but unknown masses.Their orbit around each other is measured in days, which puts them so close together that the black hole pulls a continuous stream of matter from its stellar companion.
The flowing gas forms a flattened accretion disk millions of miles across, several times wider than our sun, centered on the black hole.
As matter swirls inward, it is compressed and heated to tens of millions of degrees, so hot that it emits X-rays.
Some of the infalling matter becomes re-directed out of the accretion disk as dual, oppositely directed jets.
Dr. Tony Phillips
Science@NASA
Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:02 CDT
This weekend, NASA scientists, amateur astronomers, and an astronaut on board the International Space Station will attempt the first-ever 3D photography of meteors from Earth and space.
“The annual Lyrid meteor shower peaks on April 21-22,” says Bill Cooke, the head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “We’re going to try to photograph some of these ‘shooting stars’ simultaneously from ground stations, from a research balloon in the stratosphere, and from the space station.”
Vietnam has asked the World Health Organization to help investigate a mystery disease that has killed 19 people and left 171 others sick.
Le Han Phong, chairman of the People’s Committee in Ba To district in Quang Ngai province, said patients first experience a rash on their hands and feet along with high fever, loss of appetite and eventually organ failure.
He said nearly 100 people remain in hospital, including 10 in critical condition. Patients with milder symptoms are being treated at home.
Mr Phong said the first case was detected last year and that the disease had died down until a spate of new infections were recently reported, mostly in one impoverished village.
A Ministry of Health investigation was inconclusive.
Hanoi has asked the World Health Organization for help to cure a virulent disease affecting children. Symptoms include blistering on hands, feet and mouths accompanied by high fever and eventual organ failure.
Nineteen children died from the illness in 2011 alone.
The virus spreads through direct contact with an infected person’s oral discharges or saliva, the fluid from burst blisters or the stool of infected persons.
The Red Cross mission in Vietnam reports the disease has already infected over 28,000 children this year, which is more than 10 times the number of infected children in the same period last year.
According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), last year a record 110,000 children became infected, with 169 deaths.
The hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) disease mostly affects children under three years old (80 per cent of totals cases) the Red Cross said. There is no known treatment for HFMD.
Human HFMD differs from a similar foot-and-mouth disease affecting cattle, sheep, and pigs.
The virus was first detected last year in central Vietnam. Initially the disease died away, but later many new infections were reported. Most of those infected are from one impoverished villages.
Last year HFMD killed 19 people, reportedly most of them children. One hundred and seventy-one people were hospitalized, 10 in a critical condition. Some patients get milder symptoms and are able to be treated at home.
Vietnam’s Ministry of Health launched a fruitless investigation.
In previous years the registered HFMD cases were mild and most patients recovered after a maximum 10 days, but the new virulent strain EV71 has developed into a fatal disease.
The IFRC say it needs $840,000 to sponsor a program preventing the spread of the disease.
Vietnamese authorities are conducting a campaign to improve sanitation and hygiene practices in internal migrant families living in densely-populated areas.
Cases of HFMD are also on increase in other Asian countries, including Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.
HFMD (Hand, foot and mouth disease) awareness posters (Vietnam Red Cross / p-VNM0322)
Salem – The Salem witch tragedy of 1692 took less than two years to play out. Yet 300 years later, explanations for how and why it happened are still coming.
One theory recently gaining exposure thanks to bloggers comes from a 2004 college thesis that places the blame on something we think of as a strictly modern phenomenon: climate change.
Proposed in a Harvard thesis, the paper by economist Emily Oster has earned attention due to the modern swirl of controversy surrounding the possibility that human interaction has altered world temperatures.
Currently an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, Oster linked periodic outbreaks of violence against people accused of witchcraft with dramatic temperature drops.
“The most active period of the witchcraft trials (mainly in Europe) coincides with a period of lower-than-average temperature known to climatologists as the ‘little ice age,’” Oster wrote. “The colder temperatures increased the frequency of crop failure, and colder seas prevented cod and other fish from migrating as far north, eliminating this vital food source for some northern areas of Europe.”
When crops failed, “people would have searched for a scapegoat in the face of deadly changes in weather patterns,” she wrote. Thus, desperate people traced their troubles to unpopular neighbors and outcasts allied to the devil.
Oster noted that the persecutions “spread even across the Atlantic Ocean to Salem, Massachusetts.”
Moreover, she added, “The coldest segments of this ‘little ice age’ period were in the 1590s and between 1680 and 1730.”
San Diego – In the western San Bernardino Mountains, near the highway that links Los Angeles and Las Vegas, scientists recently discovered a geological mystery: colossal rocks perched in precarious poses right next door to the San Andreas Fault.
It’s not the rocks’ balancing act that is perplexing, said Lisa Grant Ludwig, a scientist who presented this puzzle to colleagues this week here at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America.
It’s how the rocks have managed to stay that way with such an aggressive maker of powerful earthquakes just a few miles away.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
EMSC Gulf Of California
Apr 16 03:27 AM
5.0 40.0 MAP
USGS Gulf Of California
Apr 16 03:27 AM
5.0 10.3 MAP
GEOFON Gulf Of California
Apr 16 03:27 AM
5.0 10.0 MAP
“There is no doubt that something is seriously wrong. There have been too many strong earthquakes,” said Marmureanu.
croatiantimes.com
A leading earthquake scientist has warned that the planet could be cracking up after a series of massive quakes in just 48 hours.
Expert Gheorghe Marmureanu – from Romania’s National Institute of Earth Physics – says 39 quakes had hit the globe within two days.
The series started with two massive quakes in Indonesia measuring 8.6 and 8.2 on the Richter scale rapidly followed by three more only slightly smaller in Mexico within hours.
A powerful earthquake in southern Mexico last month churned the waters of a normally tranquil spring pool west of Pahrump, and a team of researchers was there to capture the bizarre phenomenon on video.
About 10 minutes after the magnitude-7.4 quake struck in the mountains east of Acapulco, some 1,700 miles from Southern Nevada, the water in Devil’s Hole began to slosh back and forth. The inch-high waves gradually grew, eventually surging to more than 2 feet and splashing across the metal catwalks researchers use to study the warm spring pool and its tiny population of endangered Devil’s Hole pup-fish.
The National Park Service is calling the event a “tsunami in the desert.”
“To see it change that dramatically in such a short period of time was amazing,” said Jeffrey Goldstein, a Park Service bio-technician who filmed the waves.
The video has since been posted on YouTube, where it has been viewed more than 32,000 times.
A moderate earthquake measuring 5.5 magnitude on the Richter scale jolted southern Peloponnese in Greece on Monday noon, local media cited the Euro-mediterranean Seismic Institute as saying.
No injuries or major material damages have been reported by local authorities.
The epicenter of the quake was traced at a distance of some 19 kilometers off the coast of the city of Methoni at a depth of about 40 kilometers, according to seismologists. The tremor was felt in a major part of Peloponnese.
Earthquake-prone Greece is regularly hit by moderate tremors and catastrophic ones many times in recent years. The earthquake in 1999 measuring 6 degrees on the Richter scale in Athens caused many deaths and extensive damages.
M 3.9 2012/04/16 08:12 Depth 5.0 km OKLAHOMA, USA
03:12:00 AM at epicenter – Epicenter location see below in list
One of the many aftershocks in the greater Shawnee area still irritating the local people, especially when they happen in the middle of the night. Only a few seconds but long enough shaking to wake up.
Approx. 85,000 people will have felt a light shaking and nearly 2.5 million a weak shaking !
Light shaking would have been (theoretically) experienced in the vicinity of Prague, Chandler, Stroud, Boley, Shawnee and McLoud
(CNN) — A strong earthquake struck coastal Chile about 26 miles (42 kilometers) from the port city of Valparaiso late Monday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.
The 6.7-magnitude quake knocked out some power and phone lines in the region, but there were no immediate reports of major damage, authorities said.
The temblor was felt in the capital city, Santiago, located 69 miles from the epicenter. A CNN en Español anchor held onto his desk as the quake rattled the studio during a newscast in Huechurba, a suburb of the capital.
No tsunami warning has been issued, according to Chile’s Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service, although the government did issue a “mandated preventive evacuation off the coast of Tangoy and Constitution.”
The same region of the country was hit with an 8.8-magnitude earthquake in February 2010, killing hundreds of people.
Chile is on the so-called “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines circling the Pacific Basic that is prone to frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Russia’s northernmost active volcano is churning out ash to a height of 9,500 meters (over 31,000 feet) in the country’s Far East, local scientists reported on Tuesday.
“A powerful eruption of ashes took place 05.59 a.m. local time [17:59 GMT on Monday], a source at the Far Eastern Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said.
The official said the column of ashes could be clearly seen from a distance of 40 kilometers spreading to the east.
“It is the most powerful eruption this year,” the expert said.
According to scientists, the volcanic activity over the past two-three years has significantly altered the contour of the volcano with the crater increasing in size by 50% and the slopes becoming far steeper than before.
Although the current eruption poses no immediate threat to nearby settlements, the ensuing ash fallouts could be hazardous to health and the environment.
The clouds of volcanic ash could also pose threat to air traffic because the tiny particles cause problems with aircraft engine turbines.
So far, local authorities issued no warnings to air traffic in the area.
There are more than 150 volcanoes on Kamchatka, 29 of them active.
View of the upper SE flank of Sangay volcano and thermal image showing the various vents at the dome emitting lava flows that form several branches and reach the base of the summit cone (Photo: P. Ramón OVT/IG)
During an overflight on 13 April, an explosion from Sangay volcano was observed at 08:25 local time. It generated an ash and steam column of 2 km above the summit crater.
A new vent was detected, both on visible and thermal images, located next to the active dome on the SE flank (Ñuñurqu). The activity in this area has intensified since October, when the last aerial survey had taken place.
Extensive lava flows are descending on the SE flank of the dome and reaching the base of the cone.
Strong fumarolic activity was seen on the SE flank of the dome and on the S flank of the central crater.
EASTERN NORTH DAKOTA/GRAND FORKS ND
ST LOUIS MO
LAKE CHARLES LA
KANSAS CITY/PLEASANT HILL MO
NEW ORLEANS BATON ROUGE LA
LITTLE ROCK AR
SHREVEPORT LA
DES MOINES IA
Earth is approaching the debris field of ancient Comet Thatcher, source of the annual Lyrid meteor shower. Forecasters expect the shower to peak on April 21-22; a nearly-new moon on those dates will provide perfect dark-sky conditions for meteor watching. Usually the shower is mild (10-20 meteors per hour) but unmapped filaments of dust in the comet’s tail sometimes trigger outbursts 10 times stronger. [video] [Lyrid chat]
SPECTACULAR EXPLOSION (UPDATED): Magnetic fields on the sun’s northeastern limb erupted around 17:45 UT on April 16th, producing one of the most visually-spectacular explosions in years. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the blast at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths:
The explosion, which registered M1.7 on the Richter Scale of solar flares, was not Earth-directed, but it did hurl a CME into space. Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather have analyzed the trajectory of the cloud and found that it will hit NASA’s STEREO-B spacecraft, the Spitzer space telescope, and the rover Curiosity en route to Mars. Planets Venus and Mars could also receive a glancing blow.
This event confirms suspicions that an active region of significance is rotating onto the Earth-facing side of the sun. Stay tuned for updates
Solar wind
speed: 310.3 km/sec
density: 0.4 protons/cm3 explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 0206 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: C8 1800 UT Apr16
24-hr: M1 1745 UT Apr16 explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2359 UT
MessageToEagle.com – Universe is still a big mystery. The bright galaxy NGC 3621 is the so-called “flat galaxy” which appears to be just a classical spiral. But it is rather unusual astronomical object
Bulgeless and therefore described as a pure-disc galaxy, NGC 3621 lies far beyond the local group of galaxies, some 22 million light-years away in the constellation of Hydra (The Sea Snake). The winding spiral arms of this gorgeous island universe are loaded with luminous young star clusters and dark dust lanes.
It is comparatively bright and can be seen well in moderate-sized telescopes.
NGC 3621 is flat and pancake-shaped.Apparently, it hasn’t yet experienced a galactic collision with another galaxy.Merging with other galaxy would have disturbed the thin disc of stars.Over time, this should create a bulge in the galaxy’s center.
This galaxy is of further interest to astronomers because its relative proximity allows them to study a wide range of astronomical objects within it, and use some of its brighter stars as standard candles to establish important estimates of extragalactic distances and the scale of the Universe.
Previously, astronomers thought, that bulgeless galaxies should not be able to host an Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). And yet, several observations of AGN in bulgeless galaxies currently indicate that a classical bulge is not a requirement for a nuclear black hole.
Today, they know much more about NGC 3621 and other flat galaxies.
NGC 3621 – is a galaxy full of surprises. It is bulgeless but has three central black holes. Credits: ESO
Pete Amos said his pump had been submerged 40 feet the entire 24 years he has lived in Cassel. But a couple months ago he ran out of water. When the pump company measured his water level, it had fallen to 54 feet, he said.
Photo by Andreas FuhrmannStephen Wolf of Cassel is a former United States Geological Survey worker who has a theory about why wells are running dry in eastern Shasta County.
Stephen Wolf thinks something strange is happening underground in eastern Shasta County and it is draining water wells and maybe even causing sinkholes and subsiding pavement.
A retired marine geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, Wolf said he has seen what is happening in eastern Shasta County before. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, water well levels in the area of the quake fell significantly, he said.
Following the 6.9 magnitude quake in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Wolf wrote a paper for the USGS about the effects the quake had on surface and groundwater.
“The correlation is there. The behavior is identical,” said Wolf, who has lived in the tiny eastern Shasta County community of Cassel since 2001.
Back in October, 131 earthquakes hit the Lassen Peak area. Most were less than 2.0 in magnitude. But since then the water table has fallen significantly, Wolf said.
Pete Amos said his pump had been submerged 40 feet the entire 24 years he has lived in Cassel. But a couple months ago he ran out of water. When the pump company measured his water level, it had fallen to 54 feet, he said.
“We’ve never had a water problem before. We never thought about the water table going down,” Amos said.
Terry Briggs, who owns Gallagher Pump in Fall River Mills, said what is going on in Cassel is unusual. He said the drop in the water table in eastern Shasta County is the most dramatic he has seen in the past 10 to 15 years.
“It always moves up and down a little bit, but this was way more,” Briggs said.
Since January, he has had to help homeowners whose water tables have dropped below their pumps.
Briggs said he isn’t sure why the water level is dropping. Seismic activity may be affecting wells. Rainfall levels also affect the water level, he said. And Cassel, like the rest of the north state, went through a dry winter.
Wolf said the seismic activity further fractures the rocky, volcanic soil, allowing the water to flow deeper into the Earth.
Every time a small quake rattles the area around Lassen Peak, his toilet fills with dirty, silted water, he said. That is the silt that is broken loose from the volcanic soil underground, he said.
Officials at the USGS said they are hesitant to draw a correlation between the quakes and the drop in the water level in Cassel.
MessageToEagle.com – It looks like something taken straight from a horror movie. An enormous hole leading to hell, some would say. But this is not a movie.
This is a real and dangerous phenomenon. New shocking images clearly show the enormous pit in Sweden is expanding.
The 200 foot wide open pit is called the “Fabiangropen” (Fabian pit) and is in the Malmberget area is located at Gällivare, 75km from Kiruna, Sweden.
As you can see on the map, it is in the northern regions of Sweden.
Due to presence of many orebodies, mining at Malmberget is conducted at different levels at 600m, 815m and 1,000m.
According to the locals sometimes the tremor around here can last up to 45 minutes!
The enormous sinkhole at Malmberget is expanding. This is an image showing the giant pit from above.
ABUJA (Reuters) – French oil major Total has shut down a gas plant in Nigeria’s onshore Niger Delta, following a leak caused by a technical incident, the company said in a statement.
The leak occurred on a block that also contains crude oil in Rivers state, one of the three states that make up the Niger Delta, a vast wetlands region veined with hundreds of kilometres of labyrinthine creeks and waterways.
“On April 3rd, Total E&P Nigeria Limited (TEPNG) was alerted about some water and gas resurgence points, observed in an uninhabited area close to its onshore Obite gas production facilities, on the OML 58 license,” a statement on the company’s website said.
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-Seven killed and at least 30 people injured in Tripura.
-Strong winds and hailstorms from last five days have damaged more than 1,000 houses.
-10.5 mm rainfall in capital city and hailstorms reported across the state.
-Amarpur subdivision to be worst affected.
-District administrations has distributed Rs.1,000 to each affected family as immediate assistance.
-Tripura is a state in North-East India which is surrounded by Bangladesh on the north, south, and west.
-Two tornadoes reported in northwest Oklahoma.
-One tornado reported 3 miles south-southwest of Woodward and other east of Sharon.
-Two people injured and damage of about $250,000 estimated.
(CBS/AP) OKLAHOMA CITY – At least two tornadoes have touched down and hail the size of softballs pounded northwestern Oklahoma, injuring two people and damaging a county jail and numerous vehicles.
The National Weather Service says one tornado was spotted about 3 miles south-southwest of Woodward about 5:30 p.m. Monday. Another tornado was spotted east of Sharon.
CBS affiliate KWTV in Oklahoma City reports the storm has caused more than $250,000 in damage so far.
In Woodward, hail up to 4.25 inches broke vehicle windows and damaged roofs.
Woodward County Emergency Management Director Matt Lehenbauer says an infant was cut by glass when hail knocked out windows in its parents’ vehicle. Lehenbauer says he didn’t believe the baby was seriously hurt.
Sheriff Gary Stanley says hail broke every skylight in the jail and one hail stone cut an inmate on the back.
Stanley says the hail damage caused the roof to leak.
2MIN News Apr10: NASA News, Seismicity, Solar/Planetary Update
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EMSC Hokkaido, Japan Region
Apr 06 04:48 AM
4.1 317.0 MAP
USGS Hokkaido, Japan Region
Apr 06 04:48 AM
4.1 301.4 MAP
EMSC Georgia (sak’art’velo)
Apr 06 03:43 AM
3.2 2.0 MAP
USGS Central California
Apr 06 03:25 AM
2.6 5.0 MAP
USGS Central California
Apr 06 03:16 AM
3.7 6.2 MAP
EMSC Oaxaca, Mexico
Apr 06 01:31 AM
4.4 20.0 MAP
USGS Oaxaca, Mexico
Apr 06 01:31 AM
4.4 20.1 MAP
EMSC Western Iran
Apr 06 01:14 AM
3.6 5.0 MAP
EMSC Eastern Turkey
Apr 06 00:37 AM
2.4 5.0 MAP
USGS Southern Alaska
Apr 06 00:26 AM
3.2 127.3 MAP
EMSC Romania
Apr 06 00:24 AM
3.2 127.0 MAP
6.2-magnitude quake hits Papua New Guinea: USGS
SYDNEY: A 6.2-magnitude quake struck off Papua New Guinea early Saturday, the US Geological Survey said, but there were no immediate reports of damage and no tsunami warning was issued.
The quake hit at 02:15 am (16:15 GMT) 150 kilometres (93 miles) east of Rabaul, in Papua New Guinea’s East New Britain province and 885 kilometres northeast of the capital Port Moresby at a depth of 85 kilometres.
FAIRBANKS, Alaska – Alaska’s Cleveland volcano in the Aleutian Islands is continuing to erupt.
The Alaska Volcano Observatory said Friday that low-level eruptions continue to occur inside the volcano located on a remote, uninhabited island 940 miles southwest of Anchorage.
The volcano’s lava dome in the summit crater was destroyed during a short explosive eruption on Wednesday. The resulting ash cloud reached about 15,000 feet above sea level.
It was the third lava dome that has been destroyed by explosive events since the eruptions began in July 2011.
On the Tuesday broadcast of “CNN Newsroom,” CNN meteorologist Alexandra Steele declared that tornadoes plowing through the Dallas-Fort Worth area were brought on by climate change.
Steele, formerly of The Weather Channel, also predicted that more extreme weather is on its way.
“It really is [such a strange spring],” Steele said. “That’s kind of the climate change we are seeing. You know, extremes are kind of ruling the roost and really what we are seeing, more become the norm.”
“CNN Newsroom” host Carol Costello said it made her “afraid” about what is in store for next spring.
“It might be unnaturally cold,” said Costello. Steele agreed that future weather would be less predictable.
“This global warming is really kind of a misnomer,” Steele said. “It’s global climate change. So the colds are colder and warms are warmer and severe is more severe.
At least 14 people died overnight into Thursday in Argentina following storms that saw strong winds cause damage across the capital region.
“Seven people died — six were crushed and one was electrocuted,” near Buenos Aires, local emergency coordinator Luciano Timerman told reporters.
Police also said three other people died in a neighborhood to the south of Buenos Aires when an illegally built home collapsed.
In the capital, a man died when the walls of his home collapsed, authorities also said in an initial report.
They later reported the death of another man crushed by the wall of a gas station abandoned in Florencio Varela to the south of Buenos Aires. A woman was killed after another wall fell on her.
In central-eastern Santa Fe province, a high tension cable snapped by the high winds killed a man, Timerman said.
Fukushima Daiichi Site: Cesium-137 is 85 times greater than at Chernobyl Accident
….In recent times, more information about the spent fuel situation at the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site has become known. It is my understanding that of the 1,532 spent fuel assemblies in reactor No. 304 assemblies are fresh and unirradiated. This then leaves 1,231 irradiated spent fuel rods in pool No. 4, which contain roughly 37 million curies (~1.4E+18 Becquerel) of long-lived radioactivity. The No. 4 pool is about 100 feet above ground, is structurally damaged and is exposed to the open elements. If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident.
The infrastructure to safely remove this material was destroyed as it was at the other three reactors. Spent reactor fuel cannot be simply lifted into the air by a crane as if it were routine cargo. In order to prevent severe radiation exposures, fires and possible explosions, it must be transferred at all times in water and heavily shielded structures into dry casks.. As this has never been done before, the removal of the spent fuel from the pools at the damaged Fukushima-Dai-Ichi reactors will require a major and time-consuming re-construction effort and will be charting in unknown waters. Despite the enormous destruction cased at the Da–Ichi site, dry casks holding a smaller amount of spent fuel appear to be unscathed.
Based on U.S. Energy Department data, assuming a total of 11,138 spent fuel assemblies are being stored at the Dai-Ichi site, nearly all, which is in pools. They contain roughly 336 million curies (~1.2 E+19 Bq) of long-lived radioactivity. About 134 million curies is Cesium-137 — roughly 85 times the amount of Cs-137 released at the Chernobyl accident as estimated by the U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP). The total spent reactor fuel inventory at the Fukushima-Daichi site contains nearly half of the total amount of Cs-137 estimated by the NCRP to have been released by all atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, Chernobyl, and world-wide reprocessing plants (~270 million curies or ~9.9 E+18 Becquerel).
It is important for the public to understand that reactors that have been operating for decades, such as those at the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site have generated some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet…..
“SAN ANTONIO – We’ve received a bunch of phone calls Monday about a ball of fire in the sky.
John Haley says that’s exactly what it looked like.
“It was like a fireball falling right out of the sky,” Haley told News 4 WOAI. “It was so bright! It was like a little piece of the sun falling with a big torch behind it.”
I spoke to our astronomer expert Bob Kelley with the Scobee Planetarium, and he explained that it was a phenomenon called “April Fireballs.”
Chunks of meteors enter and burn up in our atmosphere. The fireballs are brighter than a shooting star and can happen at any time of the day. For reasons astronomers don’t fully understand, they occur in early April.
San Antonians weren’t the only ones who saw the April Fireball Monday morning. Sightings were reported in New Braunfels, Kerrville, Floresville and other cities nearby.
“I can chalk that up on the old bucket list — I saw a meteorite during the day,” laughed Haley.”
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured imagery of a Red Planet dust devil on March 14, 2012. Different from a tornado, this phenomena sometimes occurs on clear days when the heated surface interacts with pockets of cool air above it.
Mexican plan for Gulf deepwater wells sparks new worries
Tim Johnson
MEXICO CITY — Two years after the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, Mexico’s state oil company is about to test its hand at drilling at extraordinary depths in the Gulf of Mexico.
If all goes as planned, Petroleos de Mexico, known as Pemex, will deploy two state-of-the-art drilling platforms in May to an area just south of the maritime boundary with the United States. One rig will sink a well in 9,514 feet of water, while another will drill in 8,316 feet of water, then deeper into the substrata.
Pemex has no experience drilling at such depths. Mexico’s oil regulator is sounding alarm bells, saying the huge state oil concern is unprepared for a serious deepwater accident or spill. Critics say the company has sharply cut corners on insurance, remiss over potential sky-high liability.
Mexico’s plans come two years after the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, the worst oil spill in U.S. history. On April 20, 2010, a semi-submersible rig that the British oil firm BP had contracted to drill a well known as Macondo exploded off the Louisiana coast, killing 11 workers and spewing 4.9 million barrels of oil in the nearly three months it took engineers to stop the spill.
BP has said the tab for the spill — including government fines, cleanup costs and compensation — could climb to $42 billion for the company and its contractors.
Pemex’s plans to sink even deeper offshore wells underscore Mexico’s pressing need to maintain sagging oil production — exports pay for one-third of government operating expenses — along with oil companies’ desire to leverage technology and drill at ever more challenging depths.
Carlos A. Morales, the chief of the Pemex exploration and production arm, which employs 50,000 people, voiced confidence that his company has to the ability to sink wells in ultra-deep water.
“Pemex is ready to undertake the challenge and to do it safely,” Morales said in an interview in his 41st-floor office at Pemex headquarters in this capital city.
“You have to bear one thing in mind,” he said. “Pemex is the biggest operator in the Gulf — including everyone — both in production and in the number of rigs we operate. We are operating more than 80 rigs offshore.”
Drug-Resistant Malaria Is Spreading, and It Could Be a Public Health Disaster
Artemisinin-resistant malaria parasites first emerged in Cambodia in 2006. Now researchers say the deadly bugs are quickly spreading.
Malaria remains one of the world’s great unnecessary killers. More than 650,000 people succumb to the disease each year — that’s more than one per minute — mostly in the poor nations of sub-Saharan Africa, but as deadly as malaria is, it doesn’t have to kill. Prevention and better treatment can stop the progression of the disease, and death tends to be a matter of extreme poverty.
Indeed, in recent years great progress has been made in controlling malaria, with deaths down 30% over the past decade. That’s thanks largely to more effective treatment regimens that make use of artemisinin, a plant-derived antimalarial drug originally developed in China. Artemisinin is the closest thing we have to a miracle drug for malaria.
That’s what makes the results of two studies out this week in the Lancet and Science so disturbing. Health officials have known for a while that some malaria parasites in the Southeast Asian nation of Cambodia have begun to develop resistance to artemisinin, but they hoped the resistance wasn’t spreading. Now researchers in the region have shown that artemisinin is becoming dramatically less potent in malaria cases in western Thailand, and they know it’s due to growing drug resistance in the malaria parasites themselves. If resistance to artemisinin were to spread to sub-Saharan Africa, the result could be a “public health disaster,” in the words of lead Lancet author Standwell Nkhoma of the Texas Biomedical Research Institute.
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MessageToEagle.com – Located about 28,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius, there is a black hole named H1742-322.
NGC 3621 – is a galaxy full of surprises. It is bulgeless but has three central black holes. Credits: ESO
