Open Thread

by Mary

Tonight's Nova was about Japan's earthquake and tsunami. Watching the footage shows how terrifying the quake and tsunami were. A couple data points I didn't know before was that the shaking from the quake lasted 5 minutes (wow!) and that the reason that the 30 ft seawalls in Miyako failed while the tsunami wave front was also 30 ft, was because the land had dropped 3 ft during the quake and thus the walls were only 27 ft above sea level when the tsunami hit.

Also, Barry Ritholtz writes that the New Scientist is reporting the cesium contamination from Fukushima is already worse than Chernobyl. The crisis is definitely not over in Japan.