[HN Gopher] M8.2 earthquake near Perryville, Alaska
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       M8.2 earthquake near Perryville, Alaska
        
       Author : wferrell
       Score  : 123 points
       Date   : 2021-07-29 07:29 UTC (15 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (earthquake.usgs.gov)
 (TXT) w3m dump (earthquake.usgs.gov)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | pmdulaney wrote:
       | If you were speaking of a solar power installation you would say,
       | for example, a 300 MW installation -- honoring Watt.
       | 
       | Why, then, a M8.2 earthquake? Why not a 8.2 R earthquake to honor
       | Richter?
        
         | spchampion2 wrote:
         | Because the magnitude is no longer defined using the original
         | Richter scale. Earthquake magnitudes are now defined using a
         | similar scale called the moment magnitude scale.
         | 
         | Also watts are an SI unit of power, whereas Richters are not a
         | unit of earthquake. It's just the name for the scale itself.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_magnitude_scales
        
           | pmdulaney wrote:
           | Wow. I wonder if any local news station has ever said, "That
           | earthquake with an epicenter in Whittier was a 4.5 on the
           | moment magnitude scale."
           | 
           | Thank you.
        
             | olyjohn wrote:
             | Don't they usually say "It was a magnitude 4.5 quake?"
        
         | ineedasername wrote:
         | Speaking of Watts, is there any way to translate the magnitude
         | M for an earthquake into an equivalent MW of energy?
        
           | dragonwriter wrote:
           | > Speaking of Watts, is there any way to translate the
           | magnitude M for an earthquake into an equivalent MW of
           | energy?
           | 
           | No, because while if other parameters are the same moment
           | magnitude is logarithmic in energy, the other parameters
           | differ between real earthquakes.
        
       | robin_reala wrote:
       | First worry is always a tsunami, but in this case it seems like
       | it only generated a max of ~20cm:
       | https://www.tsunami.gov/events/PAAQ/2021/07/29/qwzteb/7/WEAK...
        
         | k_sze wrote:
         | However, I wonder if this quake so up north would accelerate
         | the breaking of icebergs.
        
           | Turing_Machine wrote:
           | There's no sea ice that far south at this time of year.
           | Alaska is huge, yo.
        
         | FunnyLookinHat wrote:
         | We got an alert in Jefferson county letting us know
         | specifically that there was no Tsunami.
        
         | temp0826 wrote:
         | Could have made the olympic surfing competitions interesting
         | (which they moved sooner because of the storm that passed by)
        
           | bamboozled wrote:
           | The Tsunami was in Alaska, not Japan.
        
             | akg_67 wrote:
             | In Japan, TV advisory was extra rough seas (no tsunami) on
             | pacific side throughout the day tomorrow (Friday) as a
             | result of this earthquake.
        
             | aaomidi wrote:
             | You see, they're all connected to the same body of water.
             | And if the tsunami was directional towards the Japanese
             | coast it would've caused issues there.
        
             | ceejayoz wrote:
             | Here's the big Japanese tsunami that devastated Fukushima
             | arriving in California.
             | 
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdMDCLwblkY
        
               | vajrabum wrote:
               | I only know this because I clicked on some more stuff
               | after looking at that but the Fukushima tsunami caused a
               | fair amount of damage in the Santa Cruz, CA harbor both
               | to docks and boats. Apparently the waves can get
               | magnified when they go into a narrow channel or harbor.
               | Another thing I only learned today reading the comments
               | of that video is that tsunami literally means harbor wave
               | in Japanese.
               | 
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dC_tf4mhO4
        
             | Turing_Machine wrote:
             | Tsunamis from the 1964 Alaska earthquake (M9.2) killed 12
             | people in California and caused damage in Japan and Hawaii.
             | Tsunamis can travel for a very long distance in open ocean.
             | 
             | Alaska is pretty close to Asia, especially if you look at
             | the great circle distance.
             | 
             | Cargo planes from China, Korea, and Japan normally refuel
             | in Anchorage, and before the extended range of modern
             | passenger jets, most passenger planes also had a refueling
             | stop there.
             | 
             | In 1983, KAL Flight 007, a Boeing 747 passenger airliner en
             | route from New York to Seoul, was shot down by the Soviet
             | Union after departing Anchorage and inadvertently entering
             | Soviet airspace.
        
         | sandworm101 wrote:
         | There is old joke that if you use metric when announcing a 50mm
         | tsunami, half of Americans will run for the hills. "~20cm"
         | could mean half a foot or 20 _hundred_ meters depending on how
         | much you remember from highschool. Many agencies have policies
         | on how and where metric should be used in public announcements.
        
           | gok wrote:
           | Eh we know what a 9mm bullet looks like
        
             | daneel_w wrote:
             | Yes, but how many of you _reflect_ over the nomenclature?
             | How many of you know the actual diameter of a  "twenty-two"
             | (even if spelled out as .22)? People don't often think
             | about the meaning behind colloquialisms.
        
               | dogorman wrote:
               | American public schools have been using metric for
               | decades. Science classes in American public schools use
               | metric exclusively since the 80s at least. When you meet
               | an American who makes a big deal out of not knowing what
               | a meter is, 9 times out of 10 they're putting on a
               | performative patriotic display mean to get a rise out of
               | you. That, or they're quite elderly.
               | 
               | Incidentally, .22 LR is _nominally but not actually_ 0.22
               | inches in diameter. It 's very slightly bigger than that.
               | In the domain of ammunition, there is often a mismatch
               | between actual diameter and nominal diameter.
        
               | sandworm101 wrote:
               | With calibers there is a difference between american .22
               | and european .22. As I understand it, the american
               | measurement is slightly larger as it includes a bit of
               | the rifling groves whereas the European standard was only
               | the bullet width. So the same bullet measures slightly
               | larger on the american scale. Or I might have that
               | backwards, one of the two is different.
               | 
               | https://www.rifleshootermag.com/editorial/comparing-
               | american...
        
               | dogorman wrote:
               | From what I understand, ".22 LR" is nominally .22 inches,
               | actually is .223 inches, and is labeled as 5.6x15mmR in
               | Europe while actually being something like 5.66mm (the
               | 'x15' is the length of the case in millimeters, and the R
               | means rimmed.) They are called different things and both
               | are not quite their nominal sizes, but I _think_ they 're
               | interchangeable in practice.
        
             | Scoundreller wrote:
             | Or 10mm if you've wrenched a car
        
               | abakker wrote:
               | People know what the bolt looks like, but the wrench is
               | missing.
        
               | heisenbugtastic wrote:
               | ahh fellow knuckle buster too
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | Koshkin wrote:
             | It looks like .38SP!
        
           | throwaheyy wrote:
           | Americans use metric units to measure the size of guns and
           | drug hauls, I think they have at least a minimal
           | understanding of the magnitude...
        
           | spywaregorilla wrote:
           | fwiw pretty much all unfamiliar americans will associate
           | 'centi' with small, not "hundred"(eth)
        
         | cossatot wrote:
         | The slip patch (where the two tectonic plates slip past each
         | other) of the earthquake did not reach the sea floor, so it
         | didn't generate a big tsunami [0]. If the purple colors in the
         | finite fault map (indicating >2 m slip) reached the trench (the
         | top of the first figure, or the red line in the second), then
         | the earthquake would have displaced much more seawater.
         | 
         | These finite fault maps are made using automated processing of
         | the seismic waves from seismographs around the globe. It's
         | pretty amazing to me that the resolution is so good, from what
         | are not that different than sound waves. These tend to be
         | pretty accurate, not just precise, and are validated from
         | additional studies using different datasets over the subsequent
         | years.
         | 
         | [0]:
         | https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000f02w...
        
         | flareback wrote:
         | That's what I was wondering, thanks for the info.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | ineedasername wrote:
       | _the two previous large earthquakes in July and October 2020,
       | those previous events were foreshocks of the July 2021
       | earthquake_
       | 
       | A year apart and they're still considered part of the same event.
       | A nice reminder that in geological time, a year is less than an
       | eyeblink.
        
       | swader999 wrote:
       | Time so see what Dutchsinse, the earthquake maverick says about
       | this. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hhfLTDA8I9g
        
         | ineedasername wrote:
         | Pretty interesting, especially when he shows the buoys on the
         | east cost that registered the quake & the plate overlay to show
         | why they felt the quake (because they were on the the other
         | edge of the plate).
         | 
         | Kind of amazing he he managed to put up a 1hr+ video so soon
         | after the quake, ~1.5 hours or so.
         | 
         | Also a bit confusing why the comment posting this video is (as
         | of my comment) getting downvoted? Is this youtuber not
         | considered credible on the topic?
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-07-29 23:02 UTC)