Japan Earthquake Animation

 From Google Earth Maps, a very intense animation of the earthquakes (decidedly plural) near Japan over the period of March 9th to March 14th. Each second of the video is about one hour of real time. Each dot is a separate earthquake showing the magnitude. The big one is at about 1:15 on the video. It's much easier to view if you put it in full screen mode using the button in the lower right corner just to the right of the YOUTUBE symbol. If you click the button again when the video is all over (it's a little under 3 minutes), you will go back to the normal screen.

The lull right before the big one hits is spooky. It's like the earth is resting up for a few hours before starting up again. How could you build anything that would survive the earthquake sequence that you just watched in the video? It may be because I'm a math guy and used to viewing the world in charts and graphs, but to me this video is scarier and sadder than any live video I have seen yet. The music doesn't help either. It just lends a relentless quality to the video that is very depressing. The earth just seems really angry. I get the same feeling I got during the last few minutes of War Games when the computer tried out all the scenarios.

According to the AP:

 Last week's devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan has actually moved the island closer to the United States and shifted the planet's axis. The quake caused a rift 15 miles below the sea floor that stretched 186 miles long and 93 miles wide. The areas closest to the epicenter of the quake jumped a full 13 feet closer to the United States, geophysicist Ross Stein at the United States Geological Survey told The New York Times. The west side of the island did not move much at all, so the country of Japan got wider.

The 8.9 magnitude quake was caused when the Pacific tectonic plate dove under the North American plate, which shifted Eastern Japan towards North America by about 13 feet. The quake also shifted the earth's axis by 6.5 inches, shortened the day by 1.6 microseconds, and sank Japan downward by about two feet. As Japan's eastern coastline sunk, the tsunami's waves rolled in. Why did the quake shorten the day? The earth's mass shifted towards the center, spurring the planet to spin a bit faster. 

This is not just another earthquake. Japan is about as well prepared for earthquakes as you can be. Twenty percent of the most powerful earthquakes occur around Japan. They are in a constant state of preparation. Nothing prepares you, however, from the destruction of the fifth most powerful earthquake ever recorded. 

In case you wanted to help out, Google has a crisis response center here with links to many organizations like UNICEF, and Red Cross.