Recent Earthquake Moves Japan By 8 Feet

The unimaginable and powerful 8.9 magnitude earthquake unleashed a tsunami in Japan last Friday. This natural disaster appear to have moved the main island Japan by 8 feet and shifted the Earth axis by nearly 4 inches! “At this point, we know that one GPS station moved (8 feet), and we have seen a map from GSI (Geospatial Information Authority) in Japan showing the pattern of shift over a large area is consistent with about that much shift of the land mass,” said Kenneth Hudnut, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Earthquake Moves Japan By 8 Feet

Houses swept by the tsunami smoulder near Sendai Airport in Japan | (c) Photo By Daily News

This disastrous earthquake/tsunami in Japan have killed many lives and caused the formation of 30 foot walls of water that swept away rice fields, covered entire towns, dragged houses onto highways and tossed cards and boats like toys. Some of the waves from the tsunami have reached six miles inland on Japan’s east coast.

The earthquake was the most powerful to hit in recorded history, and the the tsunami traveled across the Pacific Ocean which has triggered tsunami warnings and alerts for 50 countries and territories – as far away as the western coasts of Canada, U.S. and Chile.

The earthquake occurred as the Earth’s crust ruptured along an area about 250 miles (400 kilometers) long by 100 miles (160 kilometers) wide, as tectonic plates slipped more than 18 meters, said Shengzao Chen, a USGS geophysicist.

Japan is located along the Pacific “ring of fire”, an area of high seismic and volcanic activity stretching from New Zealand in the South Pacific up through Japan, across to Alaska and down the west coasts of North and South America. The quake was “hundreds of times larger” than the 2010 quake that ravaged Haiti, said Jim Gaherty of the LaMont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.

The Japanese earthquake comes just weeks after a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand on February 22, toppling historic buildings and killing more than 150 people. The time-frame of the two earthquakes have raised questions whether the two incidents are related, but experts say the distance between the two incidents makes that unlikely.