'Merging Tsunami' Amplified Destruction In Japan 50
Hugh Pickens writes "The magnitude-9.0 Tohoku-Oki temblor, the fifth-most powerful quake ever recorded, triggered a tsunami that doubled in intensity over rugged ocean ridges, amplifying its destructive power at landfall, as seen in data from NASA and European radar satellites that captured at least two wave fronts that day, which merged to form a single, double-high wave far out at sea. This wave was capable of traveling long distances without losing power. Ocean ridges and undersea mountain chains pushed the waves together along certain directions from the tsunami's origin. 'It was a one-in-10-million chance that we were able to observe this double wave with satellites,' says study team member Y. Tony Song. 'Researchers have suspected for decades that such 'merging tsunamis' might have been responsible for the 1960 Chilean tsunami that killed about 200 people in Japan and Hawaii, but nobody had definitively observed a merging tsunami until now.' The study suggests scientists may be able to create maps that take into account all undersea topography, even sub-sea ridges and mountains far from shore to help scientists improve tsunami forecasts."
Re:Thinking through the uses... (Score:4, Informative)
it is split in two parts only; eastern and western Japan, and the split is because the power frequency differs, with 50Hz in the east (including Tokyo and northern Japan) and 60Hz in the west with Osaka, and Kyuushuu and so on. The grids are pretty dense otherwise, but there's only three points capable of converting power between the two grids.
And the reason has nothing to with being mountainous. Simply, as electricity was first introduced, different companies in Tokyo and Osaka bought their power generation stuff from different places, with the Tokyo company buying from Germany (which used 50Hz) and the Osaka one from the US (which used 60Hz). With no regulation in place for the burgeoning industry and no short-term reason for the companies to agree over such things, the country split, electrically, and the split remains today.