Imageby Ben Gunn

Editor’s Note – As my readers may remember, I wrote an article titled, “40,000 Year Old Australian Archaeology Site Reignites Debate On Origins” 2 months ago. Now, there is a new development on this story.

An archaeological team recently visited a site containing a pictograph (not to be confused with a petroglyph) at Arnhem Land plateau in north Australia. They were investigating a large, flightless bird depicted here, which was originally thought to be an Emu. Upon closer examination, it was not an Emu at all, but rather a species of bird extinct for 40,000 years.

Emu

Anthropologist/paleontologist Peter Murray, formerly of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Australia proclaimed, “Goodness, do we have a Genyornis?”

Archaeologist Ben Gunn, of the Australian Rock Art Research Association who was documenting the Niwarla Gabarnmung site for the Jawoyn Association stated, “The animal wasn’t an emu; it looked like the megafauna bird Genyornis, with thick, huge toes and short legs.”

Extinct Genyornis

Inspection of the beak area in the pictograph confirmed that the large flightless bird was indeed a Genyornis.

Here is the problem: Genyornis (Genyornis newtoni) went extinct 40,000 years ago, one of many species that fell prey to a new invasive species: homo sapiens sapiens.

In my previous article, I discussed some of the different dating techniques for rock art sites:

When certain materials are last heated or exposed to sunlight, the lattice structure traps some radioactivity. Since there is a known and constant decay rate for this radioactivity, it can consequently be measured giving an accurate time frame. ThermoLuminescence (TL) fills an important gap between the accuracy range of radiocarbon (C14) dating which generally is accurate only to around 40-60,000 years BP (Before Present) and Potassium Argon (K-Ar) dating which does not begin to be accurate until at least 100,000 BP. TL is also a valuable tool for measuring sediments and ceramics where carbon samples cannot be taken.

If Genyornis vanished from the face of the world 40k BP, that means a new measure of dating has been introduced, and that the rock art must have been created at least this far back, making it one of the oldest such sites on the planet.

An analysis of the skeletal structure needed to make 3.5 million year old footprints has revealed that our ancient, partially tree-dwelling ancestors walked on two legs. Called bipedalism, this analysis pushes back the date of our hominid ancestors.

[footprint subtext] Images show aerial and lateral images of (top to bottom) (A) a human footprint made walking normally with an extended knee and hip gait; (B) a human footprint made walking with bent-knees and hips to mimic a chimpanzee; and (C) a scan of a cast from the Laetoli fossil trackway. Notice that the toe is much deeper than the heel in the middle print and that the Laetoli scan looks more like the human print. (Credit: Randy Haas, University of Arizona)

Photo courtesy of Physorg.com http://www.physorg.com/news188289229.html

Two years after the stunning discovery of Lucy in 1974 at Hadar in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia’s Afar Depression, a find that revolutionized our understanding of early human ancestry, footprints were discovered in Laetoli, Tanzania by paleoanthropologist Andrew Hill.

The footprints were left in a fresh layer of volcanic ash, which is very easily dateable. They were left by a member of Australopithecus Afarensis, a hominid with gracile morphology (in essence, thinner boned) who, despite not being as avid of brachiators and chimpanzees, spent much of their time in the trees. It is believed that our early ancestors did not abandon their arboreal habitat until around 2 million years ago.

According to Physorg.com:

This morphology differs distinctly from our own genus, Homo, who abandoned arboreal life around 2 million years ago and irrevocably committed to human-like bipedalism. Since the Laetoli tracks were discovered, scientists have debated whether they indicate a modern human-like mode of striding bipedalism, or a less-efficient type of crouched bipedalism more characteristic of chimpanzees whose knees and hips are bent when walking on two legs.

David Raichlen, an assistant professor in the University of Arizona School of Anthropology and other researchers from the University at Albany and City University of New York’s Lehman College recreated the footprints, then examined their 3 dimension structure in comparison to those left by modern Homo Sapien Sapiens and chimpanzees, who walk with a bent gait.

Raichlen says, “Based on previous analyses of the skeletons of Australopithecus afarensis, we expected that the Laetoli footprints would resemble those of someone walking with a bent knee, bent hip gait typical of chimpanzees, and not the striding gait normally used by modern humans, but to our surprise, the Laetoli footprints fall completely within the range of normal human footprints.”

NASA Astronaut Neil Armstrong

President Barack Obama’s cancellation of a key space program at NASA has angered not only space-enthusiasts and legendary astronauts, but leading the pack is also Lockheed Martin.

Obama has increased NASA’s budget by $6 billion so that more funding can go to research and to improve operations of the International Space Station for the next 3 years. But the President ordered the cancellation of the Constellation Program — a human space-flight program revived by President George W. Bush with the goals of replacing the Space Shuttle and send astronauts to Mars. The program’s price tag is $97 billion for operations until 2020.

The announcement that the Constellation Program will cease operations early next year angered astronauts like Neil Armstrong, James Lovell and Eugene Cernan. These legendary space figures sent a letter to the White House urging Obama to not cancel the human space-flight program.

But the White House has tried to assure Americans that its intentions are not to put the USA behind space exploration efforts.

According to ABC News:

White House officials said on Tuesday that Obama wants NASA to begin work on building a new heavy lift rocket sooner than envisioned under the canceled Constellation program, with a commitment to decide in 2015 on the specific rocket that will take astronauts deeper into space.

“This is a rocket that is going to happen two years earlier than would’ve happened under the past program,” a senior White House official said.

Obama would restructure the Constellation program and allow NASA to develop the Orion crew capsule to provide stand-by emergency escape capabilities for the International Space Station.

His policy would also direct NASA to launch into space a steady stream of robotic exploration missions to scout locations and demonstrate technologies to increase the safety and capability of future human missions.

LOCKHEED MARTIN

The current public outrage over Obama’s cancellation of the Constellation Program is also being led by Lockheed Martin — the governments #1 defense and space contractor — which argues that cancellation of the project will result in job losses.

The White House has dismissed the claims that canceling the project will put Americans out of work. In fact, the White House has promised that $40 million that would have gone to the canceled program will now go to renew the economy around the space station in Florida. And there is also a plan to place dislocated workers into new jobs.

According to Reuters, Lockheed Martin is lobbying Congress to block Obama’s cancellation of the Constellation Program. Lockheed Martin made $8.7 billion in space sales last year through NASA’s Orion Space Program — a part of the Constellation Program.

Stellar cartography is a fairly new field of astronomy, although the question of our place in the Universe has been one of the central questions of our species for thousands of years.

Pythagoras and Aristotle surmised that the Earth was spherical in Ancient Greece, and the approximate (within 2%) circumference was measured by use of shadows in different latitudes by Eratosthenes in ancient Egypt in 240 BCE.  From here, the question of our location in the cosmos varied by culture, with the Catholic Church resisting the notion that the Earth was not the center of all things for hundreds of years in Europe until the days of Copernicus and Galileo.

It was really not until the rise of modern Astronomy and optics that our understanding of our location started to come into focus.  During the Electronic Age, technology has further enhanced our understanding by leaps and bounds.

For instance, Google Sky allows one to view the cosmos, much in the way that Google Earth allows people to view various locations on Planet Earth.

Another fascinating website to check out is Secret Worlds – The Universe Within, which takes one from a view of the macrocosm into the microcosm in steps.  The video below demonstrates this, but the website linked above is really the best place to experience this.

National Geographic released an outstanding map of our location in the universe. The full size picture can be found here.

Finally, below find an excellent Wikipedia image from the user Azcolvin429 that demonstrates exactly where in the Universe we are.  Find the full resolution version here.

Since Galileo, science has been under attack, and its foes thought they had scored a huge victory when hackers broke into the emails of researchers at the CRU, finding some suspicious correspondences. An official UK government inquiry has just cleared the scientists of any wrong doing, reasserting that man-made global warming is a fact.

There has been controversy around science since the days of Galileo, who was forced to recant his belief about an heliocentric (Sun centered) universe under penalty of death because it conflicted with strict religious doctrine. This attack on scientists continues today, and it’s foes thought they had scored a huge victory when hackers broke into the emails of researchers at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia (CRU), finding some suspicious correspondences.

It is not known who the hacker is or how the emails suddenly appeared on the internet, but it was picked up quickly by conservative and corporate media outlets, and touted as “evidence” that scientists were fabricating data that industrial pollutants, Carbon Dioxide in particular was contributing to an unnatural warming of the atmosphere and oceans. The timing of the hacking was curious as well, as it took place just days before the Copenhagen Climate Conference late last year, a huge international meeting that had a strong agenda for changing the way our species treats our planet. Just enough time for a controversy to erupt and disrupt the proceedings, but not enough time to fully investigate the allegations or publish specific refutations. Curious timing indeed.

In particular, climate change deniers latched onto one passage from 13 years of emails from thousands of researchers that read, “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

Despite the unfortunate choice of wording (which was misinterpreted), FactCheck.org debunked the notion that there was any conspiracy going on. They wrote:

Skeptics claim the words “trick” and “decline” show Jones is using sneaky manipulations to mask a decline in global temperatures. But that’s not the case. Actual temperatures, as measured by scientific instruments such as thermometers, were rising at the time of the writing of this decade-old e-mail, and (as we’ve noted) have continued to rise since then. Jones was referring to the decline in temperatures implied by measurements of the width and density of tree rings. In recent decades, these measures indicate a dip, while more accurate instrument-measured temperatures continue to rise.

There are other conspiracies that the scientists are hiding data, but 95% of the CRU data is already freely available online. Further, the CRU is just one research facility cited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the most recent tome of knowledge on the subject published in 2007. The report used research from literally millions of scientists in over 140 countries with decades of data collection, and closed the book on the question of whether man made activities are making global warming worse.

Regardless, the conspiracy theorists and energy sector corporations continue to spread disinformation about the legitimacy of anthropogenic (man-made) climate change. The controversy that erupted following the hacked emails led to the head of the CRU, Phil Jones, to step aside until a full investigation had taken place.

This investigation took place over the last 4 months by the United Kingdom’s House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee. In their report, released a couple days ago, they noted that, “nothing in the more than 1,000 stolen e-mails, or the controversy kicked up by their publication, challenged scientific consensus that “global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity.”

The Washington Post adds that there is, “no evidence to support charges that the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit or its director, Phil Jones, had tampered with data or perverted the peer review process to exaggerate the threat of global warming – two of the most serious criticisms levied against the climatologist and his colleagues.”

Despite the massive amounts of press that “Climategate” received on the main stream media, particularly in the United States (the country that emits by far the most greenhouse pollution), the finding of this inquiry that vindicate the scientists has received very little attention. Worse yet, ‘climategate’ is likely to be cited for many years to come by science opponents as ‘evidence’ that man-made global warming is some type of vast international conspiracy to add a 13 cent tax on a gallon of gasoline. From Galileo to modern times, getting folks to listen to reason has been a tough sale.

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
-Galileo Galilei

Big Cat Species Facing Extinction

2010 is supposed to be the Year of the Tiger. Unfortunately, tigers, lynx, jaguars, leopards, lions, pumas, cheetahs, and every species of Big Cat in the world is in serious decline. How long these magnificent species can evade extinction is up to us.

Big Cats are part of the Family Felidae (or feline), and are a rich addition to our natural world. However, the Big Cats are in severe decline throughout the planet. The Anthropocene Extinction, also known as the Holocene Extinction event, is the world’s 6^th great sudden loss of life. We are currently in the third wave of this, and man-made ecological effects such as an overexploitation of species, pollution, the introduction of alien species, and habitat encroachment are directly responsible for the decline and extinction of thousands of species of life. Big Cats are one of the most impacted by this population explosion of the genus Homo.

Find some high resolution photos of various species of Big Cats following the article.

Tigers

The World Wildlife Fund reports: “For over a million years, the “King of the Jungle” lorded over a territory stretching from eastern Turkey to the Russian Far East, with its home extending northward to Siberia and southward into Bali. But by the end of the last century, the Bali, Javan and Caspian tigers were extinct.”

There are six remaining subspecies, including the Amur, Bengal, Indochinese, Malayan, South China, and Sumatran. Overall, tiger populations have fallen 95% over the last hundred years, with their habitat shrinking 40% over the last 10 years alone. Most estimates only put the number of remaining wild tigers at 2000.

Tiger Range

Iberian Lynx

This is the most threatened species of cat in the world today. There are less than 100 of them left alive in Spain and Portugal, down from 400 a decade ago and 4000 fifty years ago. The Iberian Lynx is listed as critically endangered, with extinction appearing nearly imminent. Provided something drastic is not done to save the Iberian Lynx, it will be the first species of big cat to go extinct since the Smilodon (Sabre-Toothed Tiger) 10,000 years ago after the introduction of homo sapiens to the Americas.

Iberian Lynx Range

Jaguar

Although Jaguars are only considered to be nearly threatened, they are not as abundant as their smaller cousin, the Ocelot. Further, their range has diminished significantly and our species is expanding rapidly into their territories.

Jaguar Range

Leopard

Like all of the Big Cats, Leopards have many varieties. Snow Leopards are endangered, with as few as 3000 remaining in the wild. The East Asian Snow Leopard is in even more jeopardy, with only 30 remaining in nature. Clouded Leopards are vulnerable, although not as in danger as their snowy cousins. Irimote (from the Japanese Island of the same name) are critically threatened, and have the notoriety of being a living fossil, or life form that is virtually identical to ancient progenitors.

Snow Leopard Range

Clouded Leopard Range

Lion

Although not considered an endangered species, this is perhaps the case that illustrates the decline of the big cats throughout the world as humans move in. Lions, the only social cat, once had a range that spanned from Portugal to India and all throughout Africa. Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave in southern France has cave paintings of lions (as well as leopards, rhinos, hyenas, etc.) dating back to at least the Gravettian period (c. 28,000–23,000 BP). Lions are also depicted on ceramic vessels throughout the ancient world, and were the inspiration behind the Great Sphinx in Egypt.

Despite an enclave of 300 clinging to a small patch in India, they have vanished from Asia. There are approximately 30,000 remaining in isolated patches in Africa, with only a few living outside of designated national parks or hunting areas.

Lion Range

Puma

Also known as the cougar and mountain lion, the puma is not considered to be endangered, despite nearly being wiped out a century ago. The Puma seems to have relatively viable populations stretching from the Yukon to Chile. Despite this, there have been a number of individuals found attempting to recolonize the upper Midwest region. The future of this species is in the balance however, as human encroachment, putting pressure on their connection corridors and putting them at risk of habitat fragmentation.

In North America, the only remaining species east of the Mississippi River is the Florida Panther living in the Everglades. In 2003, there were only 87 left alive with recent reports being as low as 20, and due to severe genetic constriction, the closely related Texas panther was introduced in an attempt to reinvigorate this enclave. Never the less, it is expected that this subspecies will vanish within 20 years.

Cheetah

The Cheetah is the fastest land animal, capable of accelerating to over 100 kph (63 mph) in less than 3 seconds, and reach speeds of 120 kph (75 mph) for short bursts. Unlike other species of Big Cats, they not good climbers. Unlike the Puma, Cheetahs are specialists and more vulnerable to changes. As such, they have almost been eradicated from Asia, with a small pocket of 50 holding on in Iran. Their African range has shrank much like the lion, and there are approximately 10,000 remaining.

Cheetahs are going through a genetic bottleneck, where loss of habitat and mating practices have led to rampant interbreeding. The result has been an increased frequency of anomalies such as cramped teeth, curled tails, and bent limbs, and some wildlife biologists now believe that they are too inbred to flourish as a species according to wikipedia.

Siberian Tiger

Bengal Tiger

Iberian Lynx

Jaguar

Ocelot

Clouded Leopard

Snow Leopard

Lion

Puma, or Mountain Lion

Cheetah

Black Panther

Space and wrap around theaters…is there a better combination for a mind blowing experience? Hubble 3D debuts in Imax theaters nationwide today. To celebrate, find the top 10 Hubble images below.

The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the finest achievements of technology of mankind. Its significance towards inspiring a generation of astronomy enthusiasts is virtually unparallelled, and it boasts such contributions towards our understanding of the cosmos as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, often referred to as ‘The Most Important Image Ever Taken.’

Hubble 3D is a film is split into 2 parts. The first part is the final repair mission of the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009. The second part consists of a virtual flight through the universe. The online reviews so far have been positive, despite many warnings about a narrative that is heavy on clichés.

Julie Washington writes, “The Imax cargo bay camera lets us witness the ingenuity and bravery of the two astronauts who tackle the oversize fix-it job while hanging in space. An ingenious camera attached to the astronauts’ helmets lets us see the world’s highest workshop as the Earth wheels by in the distance. Unfortunately, this is about as fascinating as watching a plumber work under your sink.”

Tom Keogh of the Seattle Times adds, “Hubble 3D” has, by far, the most dazzling footage of human beings trying to make sometimes confounding repairs to the machine with Earth in the background.”

Neil Genzlinger of the New York Times continues, “The Imax format, thankfully, makes it easy to block out all those “billions” — number of stars, number of light years — that Mr. DiCaprio is dutifully intoning and instead turn things over to your eyes, just letting them feast. An interesting fly-through effect gives the illusion of traveling across the universe, going deeper and deeper into space just as Hubble’s gaze has done. And the concluding image of a giant web of light, a sort of compilation of all that Hubble’s eye registers, is something to see.”

Without further adieu, here are some of the finest Hubble images taken by this amazing machine…

An Aboriginal leader in Australia claims archaeologists have discovered the world’s southernmost site of early human life. The site is reported to be 40,000 years old.  Is this the earliest human site here, and what does it mean in terms of the origins of human settlement?

Michael Mansell of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre states, “When the archaeological report came out it showed that (life there) had gone back longer than any other recorded place anywhere else in Tasmania, dating back to 40,000 years.”

The projects head archaeologist Rob Paton added, “We haven’t even done a reading on the bottom sample yet, I was expecting 17,000 (years) for the base of the trench and about 4 or 5,000 (years) for the top. That suggests to me that they’re probably correct, giving us a top reading of 28,000 (years old) and certainly seeming to go back another 10,000 (years) at least beyond that. We do have the oldest, most southern site anywhere in the world, an important site for anyone and quite exciting for us.”

The date was achieved using a process called thermoluminescence or TL in archaeological terms, which is in essence ‘heat glow’. When certain materials are last heated or exposed to sunlight, the lattice structure traps some radioactivity. Since there is a known and constant decay rate for this radioactivity, it can consequently be measured giving an accurate time frame. TL fills an important gap between the accuracy range of radiocarbon (C14) dating which generally is accurate only to around 40-60,000 years BP (Before Present) and Potassium Argon (K-Ar) dating which does not begin to be accurate until at least 100,000 BP. TL is also a valuable tool for measuring sediments and ceramics where carbon samples cannot be taken.

The site was located during a survey work that took place prior to transportation construction in Tasmania near the Derwent River, and yielded around three million artifacts.

There is some debate as to the earliest arrival of our species in Australia. The Genographic Project estimates that Aboriginal Australians branched off approximately 60,000 BP.

There is also some evidence of occupation earlier than the 40,000 BP range. The oldest rock art found in Australia dates from between 45,000 to 65,000 BP. Rock art can take 2 forms: petroglyphs (rock engravings) and pictographs (rock paintings). Rock art can be dated using traditional C14 methods, although optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) are also option.

Petroglyph in Australia

Pictograph: Lascaux Cave, France

There are also human remains called Mungo Man that were found almost 1000 km west of Sydney in New South Wales by Lake Mungo that were dated between 56,000 and 68,000 BP.

The New York Times reports:
Geneticists re-examining the first settlement of Australia and Papua-New Guinea by modern humans have concluded that the two islands were reached some 50,000 years ago by a single group of people who remained in substantial or total isolation until recent times. The finding, if upheld, would undermine assumptions that there have been subsequent waves of migration into Australia.

The oldest human remains from Australia, about 45,000 years in age, have quite thin or gracile bones, whereas fossils from 20,000 years ago are robust. The new findings suggest that the difference must stem from some internal process like adaptation to climatic change, and not to interbreeding with the archaic species Homo erectus, as some have suggested.

Regardless, the first ones took a land bridge from southern/southeastern Asia down the Sunda Shelf in modern day Indonesia. Considering the sea levels were up to 150 meters lower at the time because much of the water on the planet was locked up in ice shelves and continental glaciers, this would have meant an connected isthmus nearly reaching the Sahal Shelf (Australia and Papua New Guinea itself). There is an open water gap between the two that would have stretched at least 90 km, meaning that the Aboriginal Australians would have had to have the world’s earliest definite use of navigable rafts or canoes, although to date there is no archaeological remains of either found.

Although the actual arrival time may never be known, the earliest physical evidence of habitation by modern homo sapiens outside Africa is in Australia, and this recent archaeological site in Tasmania is one of the oldest.

Editor’s Note – Science Friday is part of the Progressive Unity Project on News Junkie Post. Each day of the week, look forward to a fresh article written by an expert on a variety of subjects.

Daily Postings:
Eco Monday
Union Tuesday
LGBT Wednesday
Immigration Thursday
Science Friday
Legalization Saturday
Secular Sunday

Just this week, the findings of a study allegedly indicating that smoking marijuana can “double the risk” of psychosis received heavy publicity. Of course there were the inevitable “sky is falling” reactions on the part of faux-horrified commentators who already decided, years ago, that they were against pot and are all too happy to trumpet what looks like confirmation of their prejudice.

Problem is, those findings are in conflict with previous reviews and ought to be interpreted with caution – but you won’t be reading that in mainstream news outlets.

Here’s something else you won’t see in the mainstream media. There is absolutely no empirical evidence – none – indicating that rising rates of cannabis use have resulted in parallel increases in rates of mental illness.

It would stand to reason, wouldn’t it? Considering modern rates of usage, if marijuana really produced psychosis, the streets would be choked with non-functional, burned out potheads. It doesn’t. They aren’t.

“I’ve said it for years now,” film director John Holowach, responsible for the documentary High: The True Tale of American Marijuana, told me. “If pot and mental illness were linked, the two should rise and fall with one another, but they don’t.”

It’s not merely anecdotal evidence that says so. Widespread marijuana use by the public has not been followed by a a proportional rise in diagnoses of schizophrenia or psychosis, according to the findings of an important study published last year in the scientific journal Schizophrenia Research.

Researchers noted that the “incidence and prevalence of schizophrenia and psychoses were either stable or declining” during the period studied, 1996 to 2005.

“This study does not therefore support the … link between cannabis use and incidence of psychotic disorders,” the study concludes. “This concurs with other reports indicating that increases in population cannabis use have not been followed by increases in psychotic incidence.”

The results of another clinical trial published last year indicate that the recreational use of marijuana does not affect brain chemistry in a way that is consistent with the development of schizophrenia.

Any correlation that might exist between schizophrenia and usage of marijuana can be easily explained by the schizophrenia occuring first – resulting in self-medication by the patient in a poignant attempt to alleviate the symptoms. (Studies have shown many schizophrenics report cannabis relieves their symptoms.)

But even if the claims were true – even if marijuana use somehow, in a tiny percentage of users, was correlated with mental problems – that would serve as an argument against cannabis prohibition, not for it, as pointed out by Paul Armentano at NORML.

We as a society don’t institute alcohol prohibition because of its proven connections with mental illness, domestic violence, automobile accidents, and liver disease. And the reason we have alcohol legal and regulated isn’t because it’s harmless.

The regulations surrounding alcohol are there because we recognize, in some situations, that drinking may pose a risk.

Even if marijuana is, at some point, proven beyond a doubt to cause harm, mental or otherwise – and, mind you, that certainly hasn’t happened yet – the rational reaction to those findings would be to regulate pot similarly to alcohol.

Steve Elliott edits Toke of the Town, a Village Voice Media site devoted to cannabis news, views, rumor and humor. Steve invites you to follow him on Twitter and Digg.

12 January 2010. 7.0 magnitude earthquake strikes just outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. 230,000 people die, 300,000 injured, 1,000,000 made homeless, 250,000 residences and 30,000 commercial buildings destroyed.

27 February 2010. 8.8 magnitude earthquake hits just off the coast of Concepcion, Chile. 279 people die, thousands injured, 1.5 million displaced.

04 March 2010. 6.4 magnitude earthquake rocks Taiwan. No death, scores injured.

Could these quakes be related? Does one Earthquake directly cause others to happen in different parts of the planet?

Ross Stein at the U.S. Geological Survey states. “The interesting thing is, any earthquake of let’s say magnitude six or larger, sends out its ripple of seismic waves, just like throwing a stone into a pond. And for a magnitude six or larger, those waves encircle the entire globe. And every single sand grain on the planet is dancing to that music.”

NPR asked this same question in October last year, after a series of quakes. They reported:

In Samoa, more than 100 people died after a magnitude 8 quake triggered a tsunami on Tuesday. Less than a day later, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake caused more than 400 deaths and widespread damage in Indonesia. A third earthquake struck in Peru, magnitude 5.9, on Wednesday.

According to Don Blakeman, a geophysicist with the USGS, “It’s coincidental. These quakes are not connected. We constantly have quakes going off. It takes one big damaging earthquake to get people’s attention and then they start noticing all the quakes.”

Kuo Kai-wen, director of the Seismology Center of Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau concurs. “the Taiwan, Chile, and Haiti quakes involved different tectonic plates. Globally, he says, there’s an average of one magnitude 8 or higher earthquake per year, some 17 magnitude 7 or higher quakes, and 170 to 180 of magnitude 6 or larger.”

He adds, “Because Haiti just happened, everyone’s paying more attention to earthquakes.”

In Haiti, by 24 January, there were a minimum of 52 additional aftershocks measuring 4.5 or greater. According to NPR, there have been over 200 tremors over 5.0 on the Richter Scale that followed the massive 8.8 that struck off the coast of Chile on in the same fault zone. More aftershocks are expected in Taiwan. However, aftershocks are quite normal according to seismologists, and this doesn’t mean that strong shocks in one part of the world can trigger more in other parts.

Dr. Tom Parsons, a Seismologist with the US Geological Survey clarified the correlation of strong Earthquakes to their aftershocks: “Of course, in the Sumatra area is very active at the moment because of the giant earthquake that happened there back in 2004. So if you were going to blame this most recent event [from October 2009] on anything, I’d probably look at that big magnitude nine event that happened then as the root cause, more than the Samoa event.”

Thus, the world’s scientific experts tend to be in agreement that despite local aftershocks, there is no direct causation between large earthquakes in different parts of the world.

Editor’s Note: Please follow The News Junkie Post on Twitter.