Pakistan Earthquake Raises New Island 88
schwit1 writes with news that a recent 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Pakistan killed 45 people and caused a new island to form a few hundred meters off the country's coast. The island is roughly 35 meters long, and 7-14 meters high. "Seismologists suspect the island is a temporary formation resulting from a "mud volcano," a jet of mud, sand and water that gushed to the surface as the temblor churned and pressurized that slurry under the ocean floor." Long-time residents of the area say a similar island formed in 1968 after another earthquake, but disappeared a year later. "It is clear that 'the islands are not created because the ground was ... pushed up by the earthquake,' [said geophysicist Paul Earle], but more likely it was a secondary effect of shifting sediments. He also agrees the formation appears to have been caused by a mud volcano, but added that they don't need an earthquake to set them off. There are 'mud volcanoes in Yellowstone that have not been triggered by earthquakes,' he said."
Priorities (Score:2, Insightful)
45 people died, but the news story is about a new not-island less than the size of a football field. Nice.
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Much more than 45 people died somewhere during the time it took you to write that post and you failed to even mention them. Nice.
Re:Dregs of journalism (Score:4, Insightful)
I feel sorry for your inability to get excited about geology. You know that it's a fool that plays it cool by making his world a little colder.
Re:Meanwhile (Score:4, Insightful)
No they're really not. No more than the US is a place you can get shot for just walking down the street -- you can make the case that it's true, but there's a lot of hyperbole in it that other people won't pick up on. If you haven't been there, or don't know people from there, stop trolling. It perpetuates myths about the world that just aren't true.
Complete rubbish. Things like politicians being shot for opposing blashpemy laws [wikipedia.org],Kidnapping of Christian [www.news.va] and Hindu [asianews.it] girls for forced marriage and conversion don't happen in the West. I suggest that unless you have never lived in an Islamic majority country you shut up about "it being just the same in the US".
Re:Meanwhile (Score:2, Insightful)