Sci/Tech Japan Quake May Have Struck Atmosphere First

[The Helper]

The devastating earthquake that struck Japan this year may have rattled the highest layer of the atmosphere even before it shook the Earth, a discovery that one day could be used to provide warnings of giant quakes, scientists find.

The magnitude 9.0 quake that struck off the coast of Tohoku in Japan in March ushered in what might be the world's first complex megadisaster as it unleashed a catastrophic tsunami and set off microquakes and tremors around the globe.

Scientists recently found the surface motions and tsunamis this earthquake generated also triggered waves in the sky. These waves reached all the way to the ionosphere, one of the highest layers of the Earth's atmosphere.

Now geodesist and geophysicist Kosuke Heki at Hokkaido University in Japan reports the Tohoku quake also may have generated ripples in the ionosphere before the quake struck.

Do you want to know Moar?

 

[TFlan]

I remember way back when, in elementary school, my teacher explaining the Ring of Fire..

 

[camelCase]

Seems awesome to me.
Even if most of it is going to be false alarms (with all that cosmic radiation and shet).

 

[Siretu]

Since I was in Japan at the time of the tsunami/earthquake this year in mars, this interests me quite a lot.

 

[Varine]

Since I was in Japan at the time of the tsunami/earthquake this year in mars, this interests me quite a lot.

In what?

 

[UndeadDragon]

In what?

Mars = March in some languages.