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posted by martyb on Monday November 28 2016, @03:58PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-goes-up-must-come-down dept.

The ESA's web report discusses subsidence and (more rarely?) elevation of the earth's surface. It works especially well in cities, “down to millimetres. The technique works well with buildings because they better reflect the radar beam” They're studying the phenomenon worldwide.

The Sentinel-1 satellites have shown that the Millennium Tower skyscraper in the centre of San Francisco is sinking by a few centimetres a year. [...] Completed in 2009, the 58-storey Millennium Tower has recently been showing signs of sinking and tilting. Although the cause has not been pinpointed, it is believed that the movements are connected to the supporting piles not firmly resting on bedrock.

The Register succinctly summarizes the whole situation in this report:

It was expected to sink less than 10 inches during its lifetime. It's already slumped 16 inches, is listing a few inches to the northwest, and it could sink a further 31 inches. The European Space Agency today said its Sentinel-1 satellites, having scanned the city's surface, have found that the building is disappearing into the ground at a rate of a few centimetres a year.

The problem appears to be that it was not built all the way down to the bedrock, and instead is sitting on a concrete slab with piles that go down just 60 to 80-feet into an underlying layer of landfill. Lawsuits against the developers are, as expected, in flight.

It's alleged that the city's building inspectors knew back in 2009 that the tower was sinking but did nothing about it – not even alerting the public nor the apartments' owners. San Francisco magazine's Lauren Smiley and Joe Eskenazi have detailed this ongoing clusterfsck at length here; it's worth the read.

The Register article also provides a copy of the ESA's displacement map for San Francisco with the tower's location marked and provides a link to a higher-res map.


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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @04:49PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @04:49PM (#434094)

    Its a good thing the Honorable President Trump is going to make NASA point all the satellites away from Earth so we can stop hearing about stuff like this. If we don't know about it, it doesn't exist.

    Starting Score:    0  points
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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @05:26PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @05:26PM (#434108)

    It's leaning to the right because Cali had more votes for Hellary.

  • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Monday November 28 2016, @05:29PM

    by DECbot (832) on Monday November 28 2016, @05:29PM (#434109) Journal

    Finally! The search for extraterrestrial life will commence in earnest!

    --
    cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
    • (Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday November 28 2016, @05:36PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 28 2016, @05:36PM (#434112) Journal

      It's not just extraterrestrial life.

      It's all kinds of satellites.

      extraterrestrial weather.

      extraterrestrial communications networks for things like credit card authorizations at extraterrestrial fuel pumps.

      extraterrestrial live television.

      extraterrestrial long distance phone calls. (ET take note)

      All hail to the trump for saving us from knowledge of impending bad things!

      Be happy. Keep shopping. Support your local friendly global mega corporations.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @06:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @06:27PM (#434133)

    It's ESA [esa.int], not NASA :-)

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @06:32PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @06:32PM (#434135)

      See? Its already working!