PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet, 27 August 1999
---------------------
QUOTES OF THE DAY
"A major meteor impact occurs on
the North Polar icecap. There is
no loss of human life, but the resulting
tsunamis cause
considerable damage along the coasts of
Greenland and Canada. The
long-discussed Project Spaceguard, to
identify and deflect any
potentially dangerous comets or
asteroids, is finally activated"
--Prediction by Sir Arthur C. Clarke for the the year 2019
"The game isn't over: watch this
space and read this book. Read
it, too, to any bureaucrats and research
council members who love
'Foresight' exercises and directed
research with tightly defined
'deliverables'. The unexpected result is
often the most exciting
and scientifically rewarding."
--
Bob White's recommendation of "Evolutionary
Catastrophes"
(1) WATER OF THE STARS
Ron Baalke <baalke@ssd.jpl.nasa.gov>
(2) ASTEROID 1999 JM8
Lance Benner <lance@think.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>
(3) MOST DETAILED IMAGES OF EARTH-CROSSING ASTEROIDS
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
(4) LOOKING FOR THE CAUSE OF K/T BOUNDARY MASS EXTINCTION
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
(5) EVOLUTIONARY CATASTROPHES
Bob White, University of Cambridge
(6) 4000 BP CLIMATIC UPHEAVAL: IMPACTS & VOLCANOES
Andy Nimmo <andy.nimmo@net.ntl.com>
(7) CLIMATIC CATASTROPHES AROUND 4000 BP
Doug Keenan <doug.keenan@virgin.net>
(8) IZMIT: A DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN: THOUSANDS OF DEATHS
COULD BE
AVOIDED
Stanford News Service <stanford.report@forsythe.stanford.edu>
(9) AND FINALLY: SIR ARTHUR PREDICTS THE FUTURE
==============
(1) WATER OF THE STARS
From Ron Baalke <baalke@ssd.jpl.nasa.gov>
Water of the Stars
By Greg Clark
space.com Staff Writer
Aug 26 1999 13:12:39 ET
A pair of scorched rocks that fell from space onto a west Texas
town
last year may have delivered a bonanza to planetary scientists
that
could turn out to be the most significant discovery in years:
purple
extraterrestrial salt and miniature bottles of primordial water.
A team of scientists led by Michael Zolensky, a mineralogist at
NASA's
Johnson Space Center, thinks it has found several minute samples
of
water sealed inside the salt crystals in the Monahans meteorite.
The
minute droplets of salty brine, which would have traveled through
the
solar system for millions of years as tiny ice crystals, could
reveal
the details of early solar-system chemistry. They may also tell
scientists how and where water formed, whether it was in the
early days
of the solar system, or farther away and back in time somewhere
in
interstellar space.
Full story here:
http://www.space.com/science/astronomy/meteorite_water.html
===============
ASTEROID 1999 JM8
From Lance Benner <lance@think.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>
Hi Benny,
JPL issued a press release describing our radar observations of
asteroid 1999 JM8. For details, see:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/
Best wishes,
Lance Benner
--------------
RADAR IMAGES CAPTURE BIG, SLOWLY TUMBLING ASTEROID
MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
Contact: Diane Ainsworth
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 26, 1999
RADAR IMAGES CAPTURE BIG, SLOWLY TUMBLING ASTEROID
Astronomers have used the world's two most powerful radar
telescopes to
make the most detailed images ever obtained for an asteroid in a
near-Earth trajectory.
With an average diameter of about 3.5 kilometers (2 miles), 1999
JM8 is
the largest near-Earth asteroid ever studied in detail. Although
this
object can pass fairly close to Earth in celestial terms,
astronomers
concur that an actual encounter with Earth is not of concern in
the
next few centuries.
The new images, obtained with NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar
in
California and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, reveal
that 1999
JM8 is a several-kilometer-wide object with a peculiar shape and
an
unusually slow and possibly complex spin state, said Dr. Lance
Benner
of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, who led the
team of
astronomers. The images are available online at
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov
or
http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/~lance/1999JM8.html.
"It will take much more data analysis to determine the
object's shape
and exact rotation state," Benner said. "But just from
looking at the
images we can see that this nearby world is extremely peculiar.
At this
point we do not understand what some of the features in the
images are,
much less how they originated." The asteroid was discovered
on May 13,
1999, at a U.S. Air Force telescope in New Mexico that is part of
the
Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Project, managed by the
Lincoln
Laboratories of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The
discovery provided adequate notice for radar observations to be
scheduled at Goldstone from July 18 to August 8 and at Arecibo
from
August 1-9 during the asteroid's close approach to 8.5 million
kilometers (5.3 million miles), the equivalent of 22 Earth-Moon
distances.
"Although Arecibo is the more sensitive telescope, Goldstone
is more
fully steerable, and we took advantage of the complementary
capabilities of the two antennas," noted Benner. "The
discovery of this
object weeks before its closest approach was a stroke of
luck," he
said. "The asteroid won't come this close again for more
than a
thousand years."
Asteroid 1999 JM8 bears a striking resemblance to Toutatis, a
similar-sized, slowly rotating object also studied in detail with
radar, said Dr. Scott Hudson of Washington State University, who
is an
expert in using radar images to determine the shapes of
asteroids.
"The fact that both these several-kilometer-wide asteroids
are in
extremely slow spin states suggests that slow rotators are fairly
common among near-Earth asteroids," he said. "However,
although
collisions are thought to be the primary process that determines
asteroid spin states, we don't know how the slow, complex states
come
about."
The radar imaging technique uses transmissions of sophisticated
coded
waveforms and computer determinations of how echoes are
distributed in
range and frequency, instead of their angular distribution, as in
normal optical pictures. "Our finest resolution is 15 meters
(49 feet)
per pixel, which is finer than that obtained for any other
asteroid,
even for spacecraft" said Dr. Jean-Luc Margot, one of the
team members
from Arecibo Observatory. "To get that kind of resolution
with an
optical telescope, you'd need a mirror several hundred meters
across.
Radar certainly is the least expensive way of imaging Earth-
approaching objects."
The images show impact craters with diameters as small as 100
meters
(330 feet) -- about the length of a football field -- and a few
as
large as 1 kilometer (0.6 miles). "The density of craters
suggest that
the surface is geologically old, and is not simply a chip off of
a
parent asteroid," said Dr. Michael Nolan, a staff scientist
at the
Arecibo Observatory. "We also see a concavity that is about
half as
wide as the asteroid itself, but we're not sure yet whether or
not it's
an impact crater."
This is hardly the first time that radar has revealed a
near-Earth
asteroid with peculiar characteristics, said Dr. Steven Ostro of
JPL,
who has led dozens of asteroid radar experiments. Radar studies
have
revealed a stunning array of exotically shaped worlds with
compositions
ranging from solid metal to low-density carbonaceous rock and
rotation
periods ranging from 11 minutes to more than a week. "These
are very,
very strange places," he said. "I really envy the
coming generations of
space explorers who will visit them."
In addition to Benner, Hudson, Margot, Nolan and Ostro, the radar
team
included Drs. Jon D. Giorgini, Raymond F. Jurgens, Donald K.
Yeomans
and Martin A. Slade from JPL, and Donald B. Campbell from Cornell
University, Ithaca, NY.
The radar observations were supported by NASA's Office of Space
Science, Washington, DC. The Goldstone Solar System Radar is part
of
NASA's Deep Space Network. The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico
is
part of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, which is
operated
by the Cornell University under a cooperative agreement with the
National Science Foundation and with support from NASA. JPL is a
division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.
============
(3) MOST DETAILED IMAGES OF EARTH-CROSSING ASTEROIDS
From Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
News Service
Cornell University
Contact: Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.
Office: (607) 255-3290
E-Mail: bpf2@cornell.edu
FOR RELEASE: Aug. 26, 1999
Most-detailed images yet of an Earth-crossing asteroid are
obtained by
Arecibo and Goldstone observatories
1999 JM8 is chock full of cosmic impacts and dings from solar
system travel
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Using the radar systems at the National Science
Foundation's recently upgraded radio/radar telescope at Arecibo,
Puerto
Rico, and at NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar in California,
astronomers have obtained the most-detailed pictures yet of an
asteroid
which passed within 5.3 million miles of Earth earlier this
month.
The radar images of this Earth orbit-crossing asteroid, known as
1999
JM8, reveal a several-mile-wide object with a peculiar shape and
an
unusually slow and possibly complex spin state, says Lance
Benner, of
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif., who led
the
team of astronomers.
"The photographs of this asteroid are phenomenal," says
Donald
Campbell, Cornell University professor of astronomy and associate
director of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center (NAIC)
at
Cornell, which manages the Arecibo Observatory, for the National
Science Foundation. "This is one of the clear firsts for the
telescope
and radar upgrade."
Scott Hudson, of Washington State University, an expert in using
radar
images to determine the shapes of asteroids, added that at this
stage of
the analysis, the resemblance of 1999 JM8 to Toutatis, a similar
sized,
slowly rotating object also studied in detail with radar, is
striking.
Why these asteroids and perhaps others rotate so slowly is not
understood. "Although collisions between asteroids are
thought to be
the primary process that determines asteroid-spin states, we
don't know
how the slow, complex states come about," he says.
The images show impact craters with diameters as small as 100
meters
and a few as large as one kilometer. "The density of craters
suggest
that the surface is geologically old, and is not simply a 'chip'
off of
a parent asteroid," said Michael Nolan, a staff scientist at
the
Arecibo Observatory. "We also see a concavity that is about
half as
wide as the asteroid itself, although we're not sure yet whether
or not
it's an impact crater."
The pictures may not have been possible before Arecibo's upgrade,
financed by the NSF and the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA). Fitted with a powerful new 1 million-watt
radar
transmitter, it is now possible for the Arecibo radar system to
capture
detailed images of these kinds of objects at greater distances
than in
the past.
Originally, the object was found in 1990 by Eleanor Helene of
NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who used the Palomar Observatory on
Palomar
Mountain, Calif. It was dubbed 1990 HD1, and subsequently it went
unseen until last spring. On May 13, 1999, the Massachusetts
Institute
of Technology/Lincoln Labs Near-Earth Asteroid (LINEAR) search
program
re-discovered the object and the Minor Planet Center in
Cambridge, Mass.,
designated it 1999 JM8.
Realizing that 1999 JM8 would make a good radar telescope target,
astronomers Lance Benner and Steve Ostro of JPL organized
observations
and radar data collection with the Arecibo and Goldstone
telescopes.
Ostro, who has led dozens of asteroid radar experiments, noted
that
radar has revealed a stunning array of exotically shaped worlds.
In early August, Benner and Arecibo astronomers Nolan and
Jean-Luc Margot
assisted by observatory staff took images of the asteroid with
the
Arecibo radar system at a resolution of 15 meters (50 feet). At
its 5
million-mile distance it took the radar signal about one minute
to
travel to the asteroid and back to the earth. Arecibo's huge
receiving
dish captured the echo and stored the data. In all, about 70 to
100
gigabytes of data were collected requiring many days of computer
processing to generate the images.
"This is the first good opportunity for radar imaging an
asteroid in a
very long time," says Margot. "You don't get these
kinds of objects
passing near the Earth everyday."
In addition to Benner, Campbell, Hudson, Margot, Nolan and Ostro,
the
radar team included Jon D. Giorgini, Raymond F. Jurgens, Donald
K.
Yeomans and Martin A. Slade, who are all from JPL.
The radar observations were supported by NASA's Office of Space
Science
in Washington. The Arecibo Observatory, in Puerto Rico, is part
of the
National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, which is operated by
the
Cornell University under a cooperative agreement with the
National
Science Foundation and with support from NASA. The Goldstone
Solar
System Radar is part of NASA's Deep Space Network. JPL is
operated by
the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.
Related World Wide Web sites:
The following sites provide additional information on this news
release.
Some might not be part of the Cornell University community, and
Cornell
has no control over their content or availability.
JPL release on the work, with images from Arecibo and Goldstone:
http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/~lance/1999JM8.html
The proposal for the research, with preliminary results,
including
high-resolution copies of the images (loads very slowly):
http://www.naic.edu/~margot/NEAS/1999JM8/
JPL planning page (highly technical):
http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroids/1999JM8/html/1999JM8_planning.html
Other asteroid research at JPL:
http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov
IMAGE CAPTIONS:
[http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Aug99/AsteroidPix.bpf.html]
===========
(4) LOOKING FOR THE CAUSE OF K/T BOUNDARY MASS EXTINCTION
From Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
[http://asia.yahoo.com/headlines/220899/technology/935294040-90822035448.technology.html]
Saturday, August 21, 1999, 11:54 PM EDT
Key to why dinosaurs disappeared at bottom of crater in Mexico
BERLIN (AFP) -- "Hey dad, why aren't there any dinosaurs any
more?".
The question which exercises the minds of toddlers and scientists
alike
could receive a definitive answer, thanks as much to deep
drilling as
deep thinking.
"We've got all the necessary permits," enthuses
Philippe Claeys,
Belgian mineralogist at Berlin's natural history museum and one
of the
experts involved in the drilling project to be carried out in
Mexico
next summer.
Claeys, from California's Berkeley University, has long pursued a
single objective; to show that the disappearance of the dinosaurs
was
the result of a massive meteorite smashing into the Gulf of
Mexico 65
million years ago.
The existence of such a meteorite -- an asteroid or a comet --
measuring 10 or 12 kilometres (six to eight miles) in diameter
has been
established since the early 1990s, with a crater site in Mexico
identified as the place where it hit the earth.
A crater 20 kilometres (12 miles) deep and 200 kilometres in
diameter
has since been filled in by sand and sediment.
The meteorite's impact triggered an "apocalypse" with
earthquakes
equivalent to 13 on the modern Richter scale and tidal waves
1,000
metres (3,000 feet) high, says Claeys. The result was the
equivalent of
a Hiroshima nuclear bomb for each inhabitant of the planet.
But the thing that really did the damage, according to Claeys,
was the
cloud of billions of tonnes of gas and dust which were almost
instantly
hurled into the atmosphere.
The huge, choking cloud obscured the sky across the globe and
lingered
long enough to kill off plant life, depriving the huge animals of
food,
while also causing climate changes.
Over the next several years, half of the vertebrates were wiped
off the
face of the earth, starting with the dinosaurs, according to
Claeys'
theory.
The remaining question is: was the environmental fall-out really
catastrophic enough to support the theory that the meteorite was
to
blame?
"The key to the mystery lies in the crater at Chicxulub, on
the Yucatan
peninsula in southeast Mexico," replies Claeys.
Analysing the "carrots", long tubes of rock brought up
by the drilling,
will allow the team to deduce the nature and quantity of gas and
dust
thrown up from the asteroid's crater.
Those tests, which could take up to four years, should make or
break
the meteorite theorem and set it aside from the 80 or so other
theories
advanced to explain the end of the dinosaurs' rule on earth.
Among the other favoured ideas is an ice age and intense volcanic
activity.
The research team, including Claeys and scientists from the
United
States, Germany and Mexico, has discovered what it believes to be
traces of the meteorite dust from Italy to New Zealand,
observable in a
deep buried layer of black clay which contains unusually high
levels of
iridium.
That layer of clay, calculated on the earth's time-line, marks
the
passing of the era of the dinosaurs and the rise of the mammals.
Iridium is naturally present in infinitesimally tiny quantities
on earth.
The "anomaly", Claeys believes, shows the reach of the
meteoric
material, as a meteorite is infinitely richer in the metal
iridium than
any rock on earth.
Claeys and his fellow researchers hope that their trip to Mexico
next
summer could provide the vital link in the chain to answer the
scientists, and infants, familiar query.
The project's principal backers are the US National Science
Foundation,
Germany's Research Society and Mexico's CONACYT.
Copyright © 1999 Agence France-Presses. All rights reserved.
============
(5) EVOLUTIONARY CATASTROPHES
Bob White ponders our catastrophic origins
WHAT DUNNIT?
Book review from NEW SCIENTIST, 28 August 1999
Evolutionary Catastrophes
by Vincent Courtillot, Cambridge University Press,
ISBN 0521583926
This is, in part, the story of a glorious failure. Vincent
Courtillot and his colleagues set out to study the volcanic rock
formations of the Deccan Traps, the volcanic deposits that cover
rather a lot of western and central India. They originally aimed
to clarify what actually happened in the collision between India
and Asia, which took place over the 50 million years during which
the Traps were thought to have erupted. Courtillot found,
however,
that the bulk of the volcanism took place within less than half a
million years.
Something much more interesting came out of the project. The
Deccan eruptions shed light on the best-known catastrophe in the
story of life on Earth: the mass extinction at the end of the
Cretaceous. Courtillot tells the tale in Evolutionary
Catastrophes, subtitled 'The Science of Mass Extinctions'. Over
the past 300 million years our planet has been battered by at
least seven major ecological catastrophes.
That most fundamental of geological concepts, the stratigraphic
column, has recorded the pulse of these extinctions. When the
geological pioneers of the 19th century divided up rock
sequences,
they chose units that could be recognised easily because they
contained distinct types of fossils. It is no surprise,
then,
that the boundaries between the different periods, subsequently
turned out to mark the mass extinctions.
The most famous of these occurred at the boundary between the
Cretaceous and Tertiary, some 65 million years ago - known as the
K/T boundary ('K' from the German for ‘Cretaceous'). A
large part
of its fame stems from human self-interest: the K/T extinction
probably facilitated the evolution of mammals, including us, by
ending the domination of the dinosaurs.
So what dunnit? Were the extinctions due to the sudden impact of
an extraterrestrial body, or the result of normal, ongoing
developments in the evolution of Earth-global changes in sea
level
or outbursts of volcanic activity? This debate between
catastrophists and uniformitarians is as old as geology, and has
been invigorated by the discovery of a massive impact crater
beneath the Caribbean, off Chicxulub, Mexico. There are telltale
remnants of that impact around the globe at the time of the K/T
extinction. But the Deccan lava flows were busy covering well
over
1 million square kilometres at just the same time, geologically
speaking.
Courtillot gives a reasonably balanced discussion of the
strengths
and weaknesses of the impact and the volcanic theories. As he
notes, his own prejudices as a vulcanologist come through. Much
of
the debate centres on the speed at which things happen. New
dating
methods give ever shorter duration of the major volcanic episodes
that correlate with mass extinctions. The injections of huge
masses of dust and aerosols into the stratosphere would lead to
climatic disruption and the destruction of food chains on a
global scale. These effects were extensively modeled in the
1980s,
not least by researchers investigating the possibility of a
"nuclear winter" triggered by war. They would occur
with either
volcanic activity or an asteroidal impact.
Courtillot's work on the Deccan Traps found hundreds of huge but
relatively brief lava flows-which would have caused enormous
climate disruptions every few hundred years or so. Imagine
a
dinosaur species and the plants on which it depended surviving
one
such event. The next catastrophe, or the one after, would likely
wipe it out. In this view, the multiple hammering from repeated
massive volcanic eruptions might be more effective agents of
global extinctions than a single event.
Perhaps it is bad luck that the best studied mass extinction
suffered the double whammy of the Chicxulub impact right in the
middle of the Deccan volcanism. No clear evidence of impacts has
been found at the time of any other extinction. So Courtillot
scores it: 1 for impacts, 7 for volcanism.
The game isn't over: watch this space and read this book.
Read
it, too, to any bureaucrats and research council members who love
'Foresight" exercises and directed research with tightly
defined
"deliverables". The unexpected result is often the most
exciting
and scientifically rewarding.
Bob White is professor of geophysics at the University of
Cambridge
Copyright 1999, New Scientist
============
(6) 4000 BP CLIMATIC UPHEAVAL: IMPACTS & VOLCANOES
From Andy Nimmo <andy.nimmo@net.ntl.com>
Dear Dr Peiser,
In item (10) 4000 BP CLIMATIC UPHEAVAL, Doug Keenan says in his
final
paragraph, "But, the palaeodata from Europe, North Africa,
and the
Atlantic fits the pattern of a specific climatic state--a high
phase of
the North Atlantic Oscillation (with accompanying changes in NADW
production). Also, there is a likely mechanism by which an
eruption
could have pushed the NAO into that high phase, and ample
evidence for
a large eruption. By contrast, no one has suggested how a cosmic
impact
could trigger a high NAO, and there is no direct evidence of such
an
impact."
While I must admit, I haven't read anything specifically
attributing
NAOs to cosmic impacts, I'm equally sure I have read many items
(whether
valid or not) attributing eruptions themselves to cosmic impacts.
Indeed, it has been suggested (as I said, 'whether valid or not')
that
the eruptions which caused the Deccan Traps in India were caused
by the
Yucatan impact. If, as Doug Keenan himself says, "there is a
likely
mechanism by which an eruption" can cause an NAO, it is
surely not
logical for him to claim, "no one has suggested how a cosmic
impact
could trigger a high NAO"? An impact can cause an eruption
that can
cause the NAO.
Yours sincerely, Andy Nimmo.
============
(7) CLIMATIC CATASTROPHES AROUND 4000 BP
From Doug Keenan <doug.keenan@virgin.net>
Hi Benny,
Regarding Steve Drury's posting yesterday, it is not certain that
record of a major climatic change need show up in Greenland ice
cores.
As an example, the principal mode of atmospheric variability in
the
northern hemisphere (i.e. first eigenvector of the
northern-hemisphere
atmospheric sea-level pressure field) is the North Atlantic
Oscillation; yet the NAO does not appear to be identifiable in
ice-core
isotopic signals (d2H, d18O, and deuterium excess) from central
Greenland, over recent historical periods for which good data is
available [Barlow et al., 1997; White et al., 1997]--and
climatological
analysis indicates that central Greenland is little influenced by
the
NAO [Barlow et al., 1997].
Greenland ice cores do show strong evidence of a large volcanic
eruption
(a large sulfuric spike and an absence of HCl and HF) at what I
believe
is the right time. Volcanic signals in Antarctic cores have
not been
well reported for the time period, because of problems in
ice-layer
counting.
Steve also requests articles discussing pollen analysis.
Numerous
citations of single-site pollen studies that likely evidence a
palaeoecological event are given by Peiser [1998] and Dalfes et
al.
[1997]. The only overall synthesis work that I know of is my own
(Keenan [1999] and on my web site)--which concludes that much
pollen
(and other) data that records the event results from a high NAO.
Cheers,
Doug Keenan
http://freespace.virgin.net/doug.keenan
__________________________________
Barlow, L. K., J. C. Rogers, M. C. Serreze & R. G. Barry.
"Aspects of
climate variability in the North Atlantic sector: Discussion and
relation to the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 high-resolution
isotopic
signal." Journal of Geophysical Research 102: 26333-26344
(1997).
Dalfes, H. N., G. Kukla & H. Weiss (editors). Third
Millennium BC
Climate Change and Old World Collapse (NATO ASI Series,
Springer-Verlag, 1997).
Keenan, D. J. "The three-century climatic upheaval of c.
2000 BC, and
regional radiocarbon disparities." Los Alamos Archives:
Physics/9908052
(1999).
Peiser, B. J. in Natural Catastrophes During Bronze Age
Civilisations
(Peiser, B. J., T. Palmer & M. E. Bailey--editors) 117-139
(British
Archaeological Reports, Oxford, 1998).
White, J. W. C. & seven others. "The climate signal in
the stable
isotopes of snow from Summit, Greenland." Journal of
Geophysical
Research 102: 26425-26439 (1997).
==============
(8) IZMIT: A DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN: THOUSANDS OF DEATHS
COULD BE
AVOIDED
Stanford News Service <stanford.report@forsythe.stanford.edu>
GHI NEWS: IZMIT, A DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN]
NEWS FROM GEOHAZARDS INTERNATIONAL
August 26, 1999
Contacts:
Brian E. Tucker or Laura Dwelley-Samant
GeoHazards International
phone: (650) 614-9050
fax: (650) 614-9051
email: info@geohaz.org
web: http://www.geohaz.org
Izmit: a disaster waiting to happen in many Third World cities
In developing countries, nine out of 10 earthquake-threatened
cities
are no better prepared to survive a major earthquake than Izmit,
Turkey.
That is the conclusion of a just-completed survey of earthquake
experts
in 20 cities around the world commissioned by the United Nations
and
conducted by GeoHazards International (GHI), a Palo Alto-based
nonprofit
organization established to reduce death and suffering caused by
earthquakes in the world`s most vulnerable communities.
The 7.4 magnitude quake that struck western Turkey on Aug. 17
killed at
least 12,000 people and left 200,000 homeless.
"When a passenger airliner crashes, at the same time that
people are
tending to victims, others are inspecting the remainder of the
fleet,"
says GHI President Brian E. Tucker. "Sometimes the fleet is
grounded
until the causes of the disaster are identified and remedied.
Here the
'fleet' is the world`s large cities built near faults capable of
generating large earthquakes. We should inspect these cities for
the
conditions that existed at Izmit and fix the problems, the
easiest and
deadliest first."
According to Tucker, the results of the GHI survey are consistent
with
other recent assessments of urban earthquake risk in developing
countries. The results also imply that comparable disasters will
certainly occur in other cities around the world unless
preventative
action is taken. Furthermore, the studies make it clear that
shortsightedness and lack of information, rather than cost, are
the
major barriers to improved seismic safety, Tucker adds.
"Few people realize how affordable earthquake safety
measures are,"
says Amod Dixit, executive director of the National Society of
Earthquake Technology - Nepal (NSET), which has been working with
GHI
since 1993 on improving Kathmandu`s earthquake safety. "Our
work has
shown that building safe structures in Nepal increases
construction
costs by less than 3 percent in most cases, and significant
increases
in safety can be achieved at virtually no additional cost."
Haresh Shah, professor emeritus of Stanford`s Civil Engineering
Department and a member of the Board of Trustees of GHI, uses the
case
of Nepal, which is implementing an earthquake risk-management
action
plan and is poised to adopt its first-ever seismic building code,
as an
illustration that the devastating losses experienced in the
Turkish
earthquake are not necessary.
"If existing methods of emergency response planning, urban
planning,
retrofitting of existing structures and construction of new
buildings
are aggressively applied, the magnitude of the impending tragedy
could
be greatly reduced," Shah says. "Thousands of deaths
can be avoided."
The GHI survey - undertaken as part of a United Nations seismic
safety
project - interviewed specialists in eight Asian, six South
American,
four European and two African cities about their city`s
earthquake risk
and risk management practices. It found that three-quarters of
the
cities have building codes, but only half enforce their code.
Further,
only half of the 20 cities had even a minimal emergency response
capability, while even fewer had both an emergency response plan
and
regular drills or actual experience using the plan. Only one city
in 10
reported a good, well-enforced building code and a good,
well-rehearsed
emergency response plan.
According to Tucker, cities in developing countries are at
particular
risk of earthquakes, and that risk is increasing. In this
century, four
out of every five deaths caused by earthquakes occurred in
developing
countries. Of the people living in earthquake-threatened cities
in
1950, two out of every three were in developing countries. In the
year
2000, nine out of every 10 will be in developing countries.
The 1988 Armenian earthquake and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake
in
Northern California were nearly equivalent in their magnitudes
and in
the number of people in the affected regions, but the results
were far
different - 63 people died in California while at least 25,000
died in
Armenia.
Three years ago, GHI organized a NATO Workshop in Almaty,
Kazakhstan.
At that time the experts who attended the meeting determined that
half
of the six million people living in the capital cities of the
five
Central Asian Republics occupied buildings that were extremely
vulnerable to collapse during earthquakes. They estimated that a
repeat
of large historical earthquakes could produce human death tolls
ranging
from 30,000 to 135,000 per event and seriously injure between
120,000
to 540,000 people.
Last year, a collaborative study between GHI and Nepalese
earthquake
experts concluded that the next major earthquake near Kathmandu
could
kill 40,000 people, seriously injure 100,000 and leave even more
homeless.
GHI`s Carlos Villacis, working with leading Latin American
earthquake
experts, has come up with similar estimates for Tijuana, Mexico,
Antofagasta, Chile and Guayaquil, Ecuador as a result of the UN
project. In the event of a large quake, they have calculated that
Tijuana could suffer 18,000 deaths and 37,000 serious injuries;
Antofagasta could sustain 3,000 deaths and 7,000 serious
injuries; and
Guayaquil could have 26,000 deaths and 53,000 serious injuries.
"It is important to realize that even the most well-drilled
emergency
response team, using the best emergency response plan, would have
been
overwhelmed with the situation - some 40,000 buried souls ! -
that
faced the authorities in Turkey," said Shirley Mattingly, a
GHI
collaborator and former regional director of the Federal
Emergency
Management Agency. "There is no single 'silver bullet' in
the
earthquake preparedness business. Threatened communities must
have good
and well-enforced building codes, land use plans, and emergency
response plans, as well as informed leaders and an aware public
that is
intolerant of corruption."
===========
(9) SIR ARTHUR PREDICTS THE FUTURE
Here are Sir Arthur C. Clarke's predictions for 2001 to 2100.
---------------------------
2001 Jan. 1 The next millennium and century
begin.
- Cassini spaceprobe (launched October 1997;
arrives Saturn July
2000) begins exploration of the planet's
moons and rings.
- Galileo probe (launched October 1989)
continues surveying Jupiter
and its moons. Life beneath the
ice-covered oceans of Europa
appears increasingly likely.
2002 The first commercial device producing clean, safe power by
low-temperature nuclear reactions goes
on the market, heralding
the end of the Fossil-Fuel Age. Economic
and geopolitical
earthquakes follow, and, for their
discovery of so-called "Cold
Fusion" in 1989, Pons and
Fleischmann receive the Nobel Prize for
Physics.
2003 The motor industry is given five years to replace all
fuel-burning
engines by the new energy device.
- NASA's robot Mars Surveyor (carrying Lander
and Rover) is
launched.
2004 The first (publicly admitted) human clone.
2005 The first sample launched back to Earth by Mars
Surveyor.
- The Dalai Lama returns to Tibet.
2006 The world's last coal mine closed in India.
2007 NASA's Next Generation Space Telescope (successor to
the Hubble)
launched.
- President Chandrika Kumaratunga gets
the Nobel Prize for
restoring peace to Sri Lanka.
2008 On what would have been his 80th birthday, July 26,
the film
director Stanley Kubrick, who made
2001: A Space Odyssey,
posthumously receives a special
Oscar for Lifetime Achievement.
2009 A city in North Korea is devastated by the accidental
explosion
of an A-bomb. After a brief debate
in the U.N., all nuclear
weapons are destroyed.
2010 The first Quantum Generators (tapping space energy)
are
developed. Available in portable
and household units from a few
kilowatts upward, they can produce
electricity indefinitely.
Central power stations close down;
the age of pylons ends as grid
systems are dismantled.
- In spite of protests against "Big
Brother" government, electronic
monitoring virtually removes
professional criminals from society.
2011 Largest living animal filmed: a 75-meter octopus in
the Mariana
Trench. By a curious coincidence,
later that same year even
larger marine creatures are
discovered when the first robot
probes drill through the ice of
Europa, and an entire new biota
is revealed.
2012 Aerospace-planes enter service. The history of space
travel has
repeated that of aeronautics,
although more slowly, because the
technical problems are so much
greater. From Yuri Gagarin to
commercial space flight has taken
twice as long as from the
Wright Brothers to the DC-3.
2013 On a flight sponsored by Bandar Seri Begawan, a Brunei
prince
becomes the first member of a
royal family to fly in space.
2014 Construction of Hilton Orbiter Hotel begins, by
assembling and
converting the giant Shuttle tanks
which had previously been
allowed to fall back to Earth.
2015 An inevitable byproduct of the Quantum Generator is
complete
control of matter at the atomic
level. Thus the old dream of
alchemy is realized on a
commercial scale, often with surprising
results. Within a few years, since
they are more useful, lead and
copper cost twice as much as gold.
2016 All existing currencies are abolished. The
megawatt-hour becomes
the unit of exchange.
2017 December 16. On his 100th birthday, Sir Arthur Clarke
is one of
the first guests in the Hilton
Orbiter.
- China holds the first nationwide
popular elections to its
parliament.
2019 A major meteor impact occurs on the North Polar
icecap. There is
no loss of human life, but the
resulting tsunamis cause
considerable damage along the
coasts of Greenland and Canada. The
long-discussed Project Spaceguard,
to identify and deflect any
potentially dangerous comets or
asteroids, is finally activated
2020 Artificial Intelligence (AI) reaches the human level.
From now
onward there are two intelligent
species on Planet Earth, one
evolving far more rapidly than
biology would ever permit.
Interstellar probes carrying AIs
are launched toward the nearer
stars.
2021 The first humans land on Mars, and have some
unpleasant
surprises.
2023 Dinosaur facsimiles are cloned from computer-generated
DNA.
Disney's Triassic Zoo opens in
Florida. Despite some unfortunate
initial accidents, mini-raptors
start replacing guard dogs.
2024 Infra-red signals are detected coming from the center
of the
Milky Way Galaxy. They are
obviously the product of a
technologically advanced
civilization, but all attempts to
decipher them fail.
2025 Neurological research finally leads to an
understanding of all
the senses, and direct inputs
become possible, bypassing eyes,
ears, skin, etc. The inevitable
result is the metal "Braincap" of
which the 20th century's Walkman
was a primitive precursor.
Anyone wearing this helmet,
fitting tightly over the skull, can
enter a whole universe of
experience real or imaginary - and even
merge in real-time with other
minds. Apart from its use for
entertainment and vicarious
adventure, the Braincap is a boon to
doctors, who can now experience
their patients symptoms (suitably
attenuated). It also
revolutionizes the legal profession;
deliberate lying is impossible. As
the Braincap can only function
properly on a completely bald
head, wig-making becomes a major
industry.
2026 Singapore becomes the world's first country to enforce
Truth in
Advertising.
2036 China overtakes the U.S. in gross national product to
become the
world's largest economy.
2040 The "Universal Replicator," based on
nano-technology, is
perfected: any object, however
complex, can be created - given
the necessary raw material and the
appropriate information
matrix. Diamonds or gourmet meals
can, literally, be made from
dirt. As a result, agriculture and
industry are phased out,
ending that recent invention in
human history - work! There is an
explosion in arts, entertainment
and education. Hunter-gathering
societies are deliberately
recreated; huge areas of the planet,
no longer needed for food
production, are allowed to revert to
their original state. Young people
can now discharge their
aggressive instincts by using
cross-bows to stalk big game, which
is robotic and frequently
dangerous.
2045 The totally self-contained, recycling, mobile home
(envisaged
almost a century earlier by
Buckminster Fuller) is perfected. Any
additional carbon needed for food
synthesis is obtained by
extracting carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere.
2047 Hong Kong celebrates its 50th year as an SAR by
completely
eliminating border controls and
barriers between itself and the
rest of China.
2050 "Escape from Utopia." Bored by life in this
peaceful and
unexciting era, millions decided
to use cryonic suspension to
emigrate into the future in search
of adventure. Vast
"hibernacula" are
established in the Antarctic and in the regions
of perpetual night at the lunar
poles.
2051 Ground is broken on the moon for self-sustaining,
robotized
colonies, where the elderly will
survive longer, thanks to the
low lunar gravity.
2057 October 4. Centennial of Sputnik 1. The dawn of the
space age is
celebrated by humans not only on
Earth, but on the Moon, Mars,
Europa, Ganymede and Titan - and
in orbit round Venus, Neptune
and Pluto.
2061 The return of Halley's Comet; first landing on nucleus
by humans.
The sensational discovery of both
dormant and active lifeforms
vindicates Hoyle and
Wickramasinghe's century-old hypothesis that
life is omnipresent throughout
space.
2090 Large-scale burning of fossil fuels is resumed to
replace the
carbon dioxide "mined"
from the air and postpone the next Ice Age
by promoting global warming.
2095 The development of a true "space drive" - a
propulsion system
reacting against the structure of
space time - makes the rocket
obsolete and permits velocities
close to that of light. The first
human explorers set off to nearby
star systems that robot probes
have already found promising.
2100 History begins...
Copyright Arthur C. Clarke 1999
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