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Science Friday: High-Res Look at 2012 Sumatra Earthquake | June '12 Sets All Time High Temp Record | Mr Wizard Explains DVD's

Submitted by Tjadendevries on Fri, 07/20/2012 - 11:55pm

An Earthquake in a Maze: Highest-Resolution Observations Yet of the Complex 2012 Sumatra Earthquake

    ScienceDaily (July 19, 2012) — The powerful magnitude-8.6 earthquake that shook Sumatra on April 11, 2012, was a seismic standout for many reasons, not the least of which is that it was larger than scientists thought an earthquake of its type -- an intraplate strike-slip quake -- could ever be. Now, as Caltech researchers report on their findings from the first high-resolution observations of the underwater temblor, they point out that the earthquake was also unusually complex -- rupturing along multiple faults that lie at nearly right angles to one another, as though racing through a maze.

    The new details provide fresh insights into the possibility of ruptures involving multiple faults occurring elsewhere -- something that could be important for earthquake-hazard assessment along California's San Andreas fault, which itself is made up of many different segments and is intersected by a number of other faults at right angles.

    [...]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120719141808.htm

3,215 high-temperature records broken or tied in the US

    In June.

    Bill McKibben has an important piece in Rolling Stone about climate change: Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math

    We probably are having the warmest year ever recorded by science, and one of the warmest years in a couple/few hundred thousand years as recorded by proxyindicators. Bill’s piece talks about three “terrifying” numbers: 2 degreec Celsius, 565 Gigatons, and 2795 Gigatons.

    And there are other numbers too:

    [...]

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2012/07/19/3215-high-temperature-records-broken-or-tied-in-the-us/

    This video was created around 1980 to help explain the (then) new home video format of laserdisc. Herbert was known to generations of kids as "Mr. Wizard" as he explained all things scientific to children and adults.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL4DXmKvB5k