Megatsunamis
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Megatsunamis
A megatsunami is an incredibly large wave created by a substantial and sudden displacement of material into a body of water. Megatsunamis have different features from ordinary tsunamis. Ordinary tsunamis are caused by underwater plate tectonics, tectonic activity (movement of the earth's plates) and therefore occur along plate boundaries and as a result of earthquakes and the subsequent rise or fall in the seabed, sea floor that displaces a volume of water. Ordinary tsunamis exhibit shallow waves in the deep waters of the open ocean that increase dramatically in height upon approaching land to a maximum Wave run-up, run-up height of around in the cases of the most powerful earthquakes. By contrast, megatsunamis occur when a large amount of material rockfall, suddenly falls into water or anywhere near water (such as via a landslide, meteor impact, or volcanic eruption). They can have extremely large initial wave heights in the hundreds of metres, far beyond the height of any ordin ...
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Eltanin Impact
The Eltanin impact is thought to be an impact event, asteroid impact in the eastern part of the South Pacific Ocean that occurred around the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary approximately 2.51 ± 0.07  million years ago. The impact occurred at the north edge of the Bellingshausen Sea southwest of Chile, where the sea floor is approximately deep. The asteroid was estimated to be about in diameter. No crater associated with the impact has been discovered. The impact likely evaporated of water, generating large tsunami waves hundreds of metres high. Description The possible impact site was first discovered in 1981 as an iridium anomaly in sediment cores collected by the research vessel ''USNS Eltanin (T-AK-270), Eltanin'', after which the site and impactor are named. Later studies were done by the vessel ''RV Polarstern, Polarstern''. Sediment at the bottom of the deep ocean in the area had an iridium enrichment, a strong sign of extraterrestrial contamination. Possible ...
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Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater
The Chesapeake Bay impact crater is a buried impact crater, located beneath the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, United States. It was formed by a bolide that struck the eastern shore of North America about 35.5 ± 0.3 million years ago, in the late Eocene epoch. It is one of the best-preserved "wet-target" impact craters in the world. Continued slumping of sediments over the rubble of the crater has helped shape the Chesapeake Bay. Formation and aftermath During the warm late Eocene, sea levels were high, and the tidewater region of Virginia lay in the coastal shallows. The shore of eastern North America, about where Richmond, Virginia is today, was covered with thick tropical rainforest, and the waters of the gently sloping continental shelf were rich with marine life that was depositing dense layers of lime from their microscopic shells. The bolide made impact at a speed of approximately , punching a deep hole through the sediments and into the granite continental basement rock ...
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1958 Lituya Bay, Alaska Earthquake And Megatsunami
The 1958 Lituya Bay earthquake occurred on Pacific Standard Time, PST with a Moment magnitude scale, moment magnitude of 7.8 to 8.3 and a maximum Mercalli intensity scale, Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). The Strike-slip tectonics, strike-slip earthquake took place on the Queen Charlotte Fault, Fairweather Fault and triggered a rockslide of 30 million cubic meters (40 million cubic yards) and about 90 million tons into the narrow inlet of Lituya Bay, Alaska. The impact was heard away, and the sudden displacement of water resulted in a megatsunami that washed out trees to a maximum elevation of at the entrance of Gilbert Inlet. This is the largest and most significant megatsunami in modern times; it forced a re-evaluation of large-wave events and the recognition of impact events, rockfalls, and landslides as causes of very large waves. Event outline Lituya Bay is a fjord located on the Queen Charlotte Fault, Fairweather Fault in the northeastern part o ...
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1958 Lituya Bay Megatsunami
The 1958 Lituya Bay earthquake occurred on PST with a moment magnitude of 7.8 to 8.3 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). The strike-slip earthquake took place on the Fairweather Fault and triggered a rockslide of 30 million cubic meters (40 million cubic yards) and about 90 million tons into the narrow inlet of Lituya Bay, Alaska. The impact was heard away, and the sudden displacement of water resulted in a megatsunami that washed out trees to a maximum elevation of at the entrance of Gilbert Inlet. This is the largest and most significant megatsunami in modern times; it forced a re-evaluation of large-wave events and the recognition of impact events, rockfalls, and landslides as causes of very large waves. Event outline Lituya Bay is a fjord located on the Fairweather Fault in the northeastern part of the Gulf of Alaska. It is a T-shaped bay with a width of and a length of . Lituya Bay is an ice-scoured tidal inlet with a maximum ...
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1883 Eruption Of Krakatoa
Beginning on 20 May 1883, and ending on 21 October 1883, the volcanic island of Krakatoa, located in the Sunda Strait, had repeated, months long Types of volcanic eruptions, volcanic eruptions. The most destructive of these eruptions occurred on 27 August, when over 70% of the island and its Krakatoa archipelago, surrounding archipelago were destroyed when it erupted so violently it collapsed itself into a caldera. The August eruption had an estimated Volcanic explosivity index, Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 6, and is List of volcanic eruptions by death toll, one of the deadliest and most destructive volcanic events in recorded history. The explosion was heard away in Perth, Western Australia, and Rodrigues near Mauritius, away. The acoustic pressure wave circled the globe more than three times. At least 36,417 deaths are attributed to the eruption and the tsunamis it created. Significant additional effects were felt worldwide in the days and weeks after the volcano's e ...
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Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean north of Australia. It has Indonesia–Papua New Guinea border, a land border with Indonesia to the west and neighbours Australia to the south and the Solomon Islands to the east. Its capital, on its southern coast, is Port Moresby. The country is the world's third largest list of island countries, island country, with an area of . The nation was split in the 1880s between German New Guinea in the North and the Territory of Papua, British Territory of Papua in the South, the latter of which was ceded to Australia in 1902. All of present-day Papua New Guinea came under Australian control following World War I, with the legally distinct Territory of New Guinea being established out of the former German colony as a League of Nations mandate. T ...
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Types Of Volcanic Eruptions
A volcanic eruption occurs when material is expelled from a volcanic vent or fissure vent, fissure. Several types of volcanic eruptions have been distinguished by volcanologists. These are often named after famous volcanoes where that type of behavior has been observed. Some volcanoes may exhibit only one characteristic type of eruption during a period of activity, while others may display an entire sequence of types all in one eruptive series. There are three main types of volcanic eruptions. Magmatic eruptions involve the decompression of gas within magma that propels it forward. Phreatic eruptions are driven by the superheating of steam due to the close proximity of magma. This type exhibits no magmatic release, instead causing the granulation (process), granulation of existing rock. Phreatomagmatic eruptions are driven by the direct interaction of magma and water, as opposed to phreatic eruptions, where no fresh magma reaches the surface. Within these broad eruptive types ...
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Displacement Field (mechanics)
In mechanics, a displacement field is the assignment of displacement vectors for all points in a region or body that are displaced from one state to another. A displacement vector specifies the position of a point or a particle in reference to an origin or to a previous position. For example, a displacement field may be used to describe the effects of deformation on a solid body. Formulation Before considering displacement, the state before deformation must be defined. It is a state in which the coordinates of all points are known and described by the function: \vec_0: \Omega \to P where *\vec_0 is a placement vector *\Omega are all the points of the body *P are all the points in the space in which the body is present Most often it is a state of the body in which no forces are applied. Then given any other state of this body in which coordinates of all its points are described as \vec_1 the displacement field is the difference between two body states: \vec = \vec_1 - \vec_0 w ...
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Froude Number
In continuum mechanics, the Froude number (, after William Froude, ) is a dimensionless number defined as the ratio of the flow inertia to the external force field (the latter in many applications simply due to gravity). The Froude number is based on the speed–length ratio which he defined as: \mathrm = \frac where is the local flow velocity (in m/s), is the local gravity field (in m/s2), and is a characteristic length (in m). The Froude number has some analogy with the Mach number. In theoretical fluid dynamics the Froude number is not frequently considered since usually the equations are considered in the high Froude limit of negligible external field, leading to homogeneous equations that preserve the mathematical aspects. For example, homogeneous Euler equations are conservation equations. However, in naval architecture the Froude number is a significant figure used to determine the resistance of a partially submerged object moving through water. Origins In open c ...
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Amplitude
The amplitude of a periodic variable is a measure of its change in a single period (such as time or spatial period). The amplitude of a non-periodic signal is its magnitude compared with a reference value. There are various definitions of amplitude (see below), which are all functions of the magnitude of the differences between the variable's extreme values. In older texts, the phase of a periodic function is sometimes called the amplitude. Definitions Peak amplitude and semi-amplitude For symmetric periodic waves, like sine waves or triangle waves, ''peak amplitude'' and ''semi amplitude'' are the same. Peak amplitude In audio system measurements, telecommunications and others where the measurand is a signal that swings above and below a reference value but is not sinusoidal, peak amplitude is often used. If the reference is zero, this is the maximum absolute value of the signal; if the reference is a mean value ( DC component), the peak amplitude is the maximum ab ...
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Hydrodynamics
In physics, physical chemistry and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids – liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including (the study of air and other gases in motion) and (the study of water and other liquids in motion). Fluid dynamics has a wide range of applications, including calculating forces and moments on aircraft, determining the mass flow rate of petroleum through pipelines, predicting weather patterns, understanding nebulae in interstellar space, understanding large scale geophysical flows involving oceans/atmosphere and modelling fission weapon detonation. Fluid dynamics offers a systematic structure—which underlies these practical disciplines—that embraces empirical and semi-empirical laws derived from flow measurement and used to solve practical problems. The solution to a fluid dynamics problem typically involves the calculation of various properties of the fluid, ...
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Wavelength
In physics and mathematics, wavelength or spatial period of a wave or periodic function is the distance over which the wave's shape repeats. In other words, it is the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same ''phase (waves), phase'' on the wave, such as two adjacent crests, troughs, or zero crossings. Wavelength is a characteristic of both traveling waves and standing waves, as well as other spatial wave patterns. The multiplicative inverse, inverse of the wavelength is called the ''spatial frequency''. Wavelength is commonly designated by the Greek letter lambda (''λ''). For a modulated wave, ''wavelength'' may refer to the carrier wavelength of the signal. The term ''wavelength'' may also apply to the repeating envelope (mathematics), envelope of modulated waves or waves formed by Interference (wave propagation), interference of several sinusoids. Assuming a sinusoidal wave moving at a fixed phase velocity, wave speed, wavelength is inversely proportion ...
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