Monday, March 11, 2013

Earthquakes=Space Music?

Apparently the waves that travel through the Earth and cause the ground to roll and buildings to rattle are not the only ones produced by earthquakes: Megaquake felt in space AFP-JIJI Mar 12, 2013 WASHINGTON – A European Space Agency satellite circling the Earth was able to detect the massive 2011 quake that ravaged Japan, resulting in the loss of some 19,000 lives and causing massive destruction, a new study said Sunday. “The atmospheric infrasounds following the great Tohoku earthquake . . . induced variations of air density and vertical acceleration of the GOCE platform,” said a report published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The Gravity Ocean Circulation Explorer is the European Space Agency super-sensitive satellite that acts like an orbital seismologist. Scientists argue that earthquakes not only create seismic waves that travel through Earth’s interior, but large tremors also cause the surface of the planet to vibrate like a drum. This produces sound waves that travel upward through the atmosphere.

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