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posted by martyb on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the I'm-all-shook-up dept.

Just before 9.30am on Sunday 11 November, a series of unusual seismic pulses rippled around the world almost undetected.

The waves rang for over 20 minutes, emanating about 15 miles off the shores of Mayotte - a tiny island in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Africa.

From here, they reverberated across Africa, setting off geological sensors in Zambia, Kenya, and Ethiopia.

They crossed the Atlantic, and were picked up in Chile, New Zealand, Canada, and even Hawaii nearly 11,000 miles away, the National Geographic reports.

Despite their huge range, the waves were apparently not felt by anybody. However, one person monitoring the US Geological Survey's live stream of seismogram displays did notice the unusual waveform and posted it to Twitter, sparking the interest of other geologists and earthquake enthusiasts.

[...] The bizarre waveform is what scientists call "monochromatic". Earthquakes normally produce waves of so many different frequencies, the wave readings appear more jumbled.

But the mystery waveform from Mayotte was a crisp zigzag, which repeated after steady 17-second intervals.

"They're too nice. They're too perfect to be nature," joked the University of Glasgow's Helen Robinson, who is study[ing] for a PhD in applied volcanology.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/earthquake-seismic-waves-mayotte-madagascar-volcanic-activity-science-a8659236.html


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 05 2018, @01:47PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 05 2018, @01:47PM (#770062) Journal

    Things like Hurricane Sandy causing data centers to move up [huffingtonpost.com.au] and unreliable power connections and "good bye mass transit" and Wall Street banksters needing to put up with the stench of overflowing shiters aso ... spring (or, if you like, flood) to mind.

    Better disaster preparedness helps even if you're not experiencing climate change. A few inches of sea level rise isn't the reason New York City didn't have its shit together.