Two unrelated events were in the news last week in scientific articles about earth movement better known as earthquakes. Both amazing!
One was that the horrific fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, which caused at least 14 deaths and left a wide swath of devastation, was so powerful that the United States Geological Survey registered it as a 2.1-magnitude earthquake.
The seismic impact of Hurricane Sandy last October may have been the same or larger: Keith D. Koper, a geophysicist at the University of Utah, and a colleague reported that waves pounding the seafloor generated “microseisms” that were picked up around the country. “There is no magnitude scale for the microseisms generated by Sandy, but Koper says they range from roughly 2 to 3 on a quake magnitude scale,” ScienceDaily, a news Web site, reported. “The conversion is difficult because earthquakes pack a quick punch, while storms unleash their energy for many hours.”
Makes sense and…Wow!