A year ago yesterday the Tōhoku-Oki earthquake and resultant tsunami hit the Japanese coastline, triggering the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster. A year on, many questions are being asked about how bad…
How does Queensland tourism recover after a cyclone and floods earlier this year?
AFP Photo/Paul Crcok
This year’s natural disasters have been an omnipresent and unwelcome theme impacting on tourism to Japan, New Zealand, Queensland and Thailand. Long after the initial horror of a natural disaster, the…
The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste (East Timor) is one of the world’s newest post-conflict nations. Next year it celebrates ten years as an independent democratic state, after almost 30 years of Indonesian…
This week, a committee of six scientists (including Dr Enzo Boschi, formerly president of Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology) and one government official, whose role was to advise…
A magnitude 4.4 earthquake felt in Melbourne on Tuesday morning is the third largest in a series of 300 quakes that have been gently shaking regional Victoria since January 2009, a seismologist said. The…
The magnitude 9 earthquake that hit Japan in March caused 400km of land slip.
Flickr
The magnitude 9 earthquake that occurred in Japan in March this year caused a 400km long land rupture, releasing centuries of pent up energy caused by two tectonic plates pushing slowly against each other…
Theories suggesting lunar influence on earthquakes have serious cracks.
penguinbush
With a total lunar eclipse set to occur just before sunrise (AEST) on Thursday, we can expect to see certain views regurgitated about our moon. Our satellite has been the focus of speculation and folklore…
Japanese yakuza gangsters have made significant donations to tsunami relief efforts.
AAP
Should we bother to ask whether some gifts and donations could be interpreted as thinly veiled bribes, or is the distinction always clear? A recent example of the potential ambiguity of gift-giving was…
The last 10 years have seen three of the seven biggest earthquakes ever recorded.
Tubbi/Wikimedia Commons
Since the 2004 Sumatra earthquake, there have been several major events, and a large number of magnitude-8 earthquakes – a cluster, it could be said, of large earthquakes. The last time we saw this was…
Is earthquake prediction even possible?
Soe Than WIN/AFP
Martha Savage, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
Why have so many lives been lost in Japan and New Zealand recently? And why have so many survivors – the so-called “lucky ones” – had their livelihoods and homes destroyed? As a seismologist, I ask myself…
Is the nuclear industry facing unfair criticism?
AFP Photo/Don Emmert
Japan relies on nuclear power for about 30% of its electricity. It has few natural resources and imports large quantities of coal, gas and oil at an ever increasing cost. Some Japanese people are not in…
Should we be able to better “manage” extreme events?
Kimimasa Mayama/EPA
What lessons can we learn from the March 11 Japan earthquake and tsunami? Well, hindsight is a wonderful thing. We can, of course, question the wisdom of placing nuclear power plants in coastal locations…