geology

Chris Knight's avatar

Those were the words of one Harry Truman (no relation to that Harry S Truman) in the days prior to the eruption.  Truman had a lodge on the side of Spirit Lake, in the shadow of Mount St. Helens.  He lived there with twenty-some cats, and I guess being almost ninety years of age he was just too stubborn to listen to geologists who were screaming at him to get out of the area.  That giant building bulge on the north slope of the mountain didn’t seem to impress.

A few days later, an earthquake triggered the lateral blast on the north flank.  The entire top of the mountain and the north slope were blown away.  Harry Truman and his cats are now somewhere 300 feet beneath ash and rock that eventually formed a new Spirit Lake.  In all the eruption killed 57 people, including volcanologist David Johnston.  His camp ...

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The largest ejection of charged particles from the Sun since 2005 is currently speeding toward Earth at 5 million miles per hour. It’s due to hit us sometime tomorrow.

In recent months I have made it known that for the past number of years, I have been observing a correlation between this kind of solar activity and an increase in significant seismic activity. You can read about them here and here and here and most recently from October here. So in keeping with that, I am going to strongly suggest that this latest storm of energy which the Sun is throwing at us could possibly trigger severe earthquake activity.

Just something to maybe bear in mind these next few days and weeks…...

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About the same time that Operation: Desert Storm was going on but before the ground war started in Iraq back in 1991, I read The Hobbit for the first time. Immediately after that I plunged into The Lord of the Rings. And it wasn’t long after that when I thought that since I was on such a hot streak that I’d read The Silmarillion as well.

And my brain immediately got befuddled by the vastness of J.R.R. Tolkien’s cosmology that had only been hinted at in The Lord of the Rings.

The thing which I most couldn’t wrap my mind around was Middle-earth before the fall of Númenor: Tolkien had the world that would eventually be our own as a “flat Earth”, and it stayed that way until the last king of Númenor sailed into the west to try to wrest away an immortality that could never ...

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…moved the axis of the entire Earth 10 inches from its previous position.

And the coastline of Japan has been permanently moved nearly 2 and a half meters.

Once again, I am reminded about how lacking in humility we are in regard to the world we live upon.

Try to think about the forces required to move something as big as the entire Earth by ten inches. Just ten inches.

In the first year of this blog’s operation, after the 2004 Indonesia earthquake/tsunami, I posted an excerpt from Jurassic Park (the super-incredible novel not the less-than-satisfying movie). It’s the scene toward the end where Ian Malcolm is telling Hammond about how the Earth cannot be destroyed. It’s perhaps worth reading again, and pondering....

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That’s just short of the 2004 Boxing Day earthquake that produced the tsunami which devastated Indonedia and other places along thousands of miles of the Indian Ocean’s shoreline.

8.9 Richter… sheesh. I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like to experience something like that.

Thoughts and prayers going out this morning to our friends in Japan. And if you can, tune in to the television coverage going on right now. This is history in the making.

EDIT 2:55 a.m. EST: This blog has lots of readers in Hawaii (yeah hey to you too Danny :-). Now hearing that a tsunami warning has been issued and that you guys are due to get hit by the heavy end of the hammer around 3:00 a.m. Hawaiian local time this morning.

Got you guys in prayer especially. Please, be safe....

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Chris Knight's avatar

Here’s the link if you wanna look at it. It was about the massive discharge of highly-energized particles that the Sun threw out at the Earth early last week. As a result there were some astonishingly brilliant aurora reported at the northern latitudes.

Well anyway, in my post I wondered aloud if there might be any earthquake activity that would happen as a result, ‘cuz I’ve noticing for the past few years that whenever this planet gets hit by particles from a solar flare that it seems to agitate the inner workins enough to cause pretty good rumblin’ soon afterward.

I wrote that last Monday, August 2nd. Today, August 12th, there have been two earthquakes reported in the past several hours. A 6.0 quake hitting the island nation of Vanuatu and then a short while ago a 6.9 quake striking just over a hundred miles away from Quito in ...

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I may get called a “kook” from some quarters for writing about this. All I can really say in my own defense is that it’s something I’m sincerely curious about and I was told a long time ago that the only wrong question to ask is one that isn’t asked at all…

Slashdot is spreading the news this afternoon about a massive ejection of high-energy particles from the the sun. It’s headed toward Earth and should reach us sometime tomorrow. Among other things it means that we should be enjoying some lovely aurora, if you’re fortunate to live at a high-enough latitude.

Awright well, here’s the thing: I’ve noticed in the past several years that most every time we get hit by a solar flare, that there’s usually a massive earthquake that happens not very long afterward.

Considering that the inside of the Earth is a molten piezoelectric dynamo ...

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Those were the words of one Harry R. Truman. He also assured reporters and visitors to his lodge that “No one knows this mountain better than me.”

The 83 year-old Harry Truman was speaking of Mount St. Helens in the state of Washington: the mountain on which he lived along with his 16 cats. For two months the long-quiet volcano had slowly been stirring in activity. Geologists became alarmed by the increasing swarms of small quakes and the appearance of a bulge on St. Helens’ north side: indication that lava was building up beneath. Many tried to convince him to leave, but Harry Truman refused to go. It was nothing to worry about, he swore up and down.

A few days later, at 8:32 a.m. on the morning of May 18th 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted. It was one of the most violent geological events in modern history. ...

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In case you’re wondering, I’ve heard from an authority on the subject that the name of that volcano in Iceland that is currently plaguing air travel in Europe (and elsewhere?) should be pronounced “AY-uh-fyat-luh-YOE-kuutl-uh”.

The Reykjavík Grapevine has published – and will probably publish many more now that Eyjafjallajökull’s activity is apparently intensifying and may even trigger the eruption of a bigger volcano nearby – several photos of Eyjafjallajökull wrecking havoc.

Anyone else think it’s kinda funny that this is all happening on the same week as Earth Day?...

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From The Reykjavík Grapevine …

Volcano Erupts Under Eyjafjallajökull

21.3.2010
Words by Haukur S. Magnússon

A volcanic eruption has just begun under the Eyjafjallajökull glacier. This has been verified by local authorities in neighbouring Hvolsvöllur. Vísir reports that farms in the Fljótshlíð area and by Markarhlíð are already being evacuated. Locals in the area have confirmed that they are viewing flames and a steady stream of lava from the glacier.

Eyjafjallajökull is an active central volcano. There is reportedly no recorded history of catastrophic eruptions in the area. The volcano last erupted 189 years ago and apparently caused a lot of ash fall in the area. Although speculation on the subject is pretty much useless (especially since your loving team of Grapevine reporters isn’t really comprised of geologists or anything, although we scored pretty well in the subject in high school), folks are saying that besides the ash fall the

...
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