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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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @08:34PM
This is offtopic. I was going to mod you as such. However, I am going to agree also. My visits here are shorter and shorter. Today is the first time I have been here in 3 days. Not much had changed either. My visits to the green site are also becoming shorter and shorter. The only reason I do not have a lower id number is because I do not always comment. By the time I wanted to it had been a few weeks.
Right now most discussions devolve into little more than shouting matches between two flavors of ice cream.
To anyone who reads this. Politics is easy to have an opinion on. We all have one. Just because someone does not exactly align to your world view is no reason to deride them or subject them to the mental abuse that is being throw around here and on the rest of the net.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Monday November 28 2016, @08:41PM
I was going to have the subject be "Offtopic" but forgot to change it.
Arguments over politics are fine, hopefully people can avoid the simple ad hominem stuff.
My big gripe is that political opinions are leaking into nearly every story, opinionated garbage (ad hominem type stuff) gets modded insightful or informative, and then a big chunk of the discussion devolves into dealing with such low level stuff.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @09:48PM
This is offtopic. I was going to mod you as such.
You know what? Fuck you.
On the one hand, there is a meta discussion surrounding the topic at hand, but as it is tangential, it is offtopic? Really? I would have thought discussing vitamin C absorption would have been offtopic, but no, apparently how politics shapes views on a story, and why some are disenchanted by it is. I would say piss-poor modding is as much of a problem than any political bent. Have you read the guidelines for modding? What a tenuous claim.
On the other hand, since you agree, it is suddenly on topic, you hypocrite. You're no better than those you criticize really, just you are oblivious to your own political bent.
Fuck you. You are a major reason why discourse has become inflamed, you self-righteous lout. It isn't so much that people argue forcefully, but that they disagree with you.