Details of Japan Earthquake Explain Its Extraordinary Strength and Unexpectedness
Thursday, May 19, 2011 - 14:30
in Earth & Climate
On March 11, the seafloor 130 kilometers off Japan's eastern coast slipped more than 20 meters beneath the crust that makes up the Pacific plate, pulling the island nation as much as 4.3 meters closer to California and its coast 66 centimeters down. In fact, the first geologic sensors on the seafloor, which happen to lie near the center of the Tohoku-oki quake , as it is now formally called based on the closest regions of the island nation to the quake's epicenter offshore, registered a shift of some 24 meters east-southeast and an uplift of three meters at that point. [More]