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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: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29 2016, @04:23AM
I know it's hard for you to imagine, but there are people from other countries reading this site. I am one of those. Pardon my french, but I will shit over your sacred Constitution any day I please, at least as long as the politicians of your country assert that its protections only apply to your own people and everyone else is fair game to be shit all over anytime. While in extension of the former, asserting that the projection of force into all the rest of the world by means of diplomatic and economic pressure, military intervention, global surveillance and cloak-and-dagger operations including and up to ousting democratically elected leaders of sovereign foreign nations is not only justified, but the moral imperative of the exceptional people of the US of A.
But niceties aside: From where I am standing, Trump winning the US election is the best possible outcome. Why? Hillary's record from her time as a secretary of state shows quite clearly what direction the world would have taken with her in the oval office. Hint: it involves more bombs, drones, cloak and dagger and more surveillance. It involves more playing High Noon with Russia (which in itself convinces me that the lady is a psychopath).
Trump on the other hand, will keep your country busy. Maybe he will be the catalyst that forges a real, believable opposition, outside of your ridiculous fig-leaf two-party system. Regardless, he will keep your country too busy to go start fires everywhere else in the world for your own benefit.
I genuinely wish you all the best for the upcoming four years. If you are upset with Trump so much, go support a party that has neither a Donkey or an Elephant as a mascot. Maybe, finally, we in the rest of the world will see the promised CHANGE, HOPE, etc. Maybe Trump will even be a Nobel Peace Prize laureate (tee hee hee). How do you say? Good luck and godsppeed!