Indonesian tsunami kills 272; help finally arrives AP - October 27, 2010
Planes and helicopters packed with rescue workers and supplies landed for the first time Wednesday on remote Indonesian islands that were pounded by a 10-foot (three-meter) tsunami, sweeping away villages and killing at least 272 people. The first aerial surveys of the region revealed huge swaths of land underwater and the crumbled rubble of homes torn apart by the wave. One lay tilted, resting on the edge of its red roof, with tires and slabs of concrete piled up on the surrounding sand. Two days after a powerful earthquake triggered the wave, the casualty count was still rising as rescuers and disaster officials finally reached the Mentawai island chain, which was closest to the epicenter and the worst hit. Bad weather had kept them away.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, meanwhile, cut short a state visit to Vietnam to deal with two major disasters that struck Indonesia in less than 24 hours. The country's most volatile volcano, Mount Merapi, 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) to the east, erupted at dusk Tuesday, sending up searing ash clouds and killing more than two dozen people. Both events fell along Indonesia's portion of the Pacific Ring of Fire, a series of fault lines that are prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity stretching from the Western Hemisphere through Japan and Southeast Asia. Disaster officials were still trying to reach more than a dozen villages on the Mentawais - a popular surfer's destination that is usually reachable only by a 12-hour boat ride.
October 2010 Sumatra Earthquake Wikipedia
Many people have recounted dreams of huge waves, like a tsunami, coming over NYC. Some live here, while others don't. What are they seeing? Fact or metaphor? Why are these dreams reoccurring? Does it make me want to pack up and run inland as I live on the water? Nope! I never live in fear. Whatever will be will be. Que sera sera.
There is something about the article below that rings true.
66-Foot Waves Hit New York in Ancient Asteroid Splashdown Live Science - October 26, 2010
A cosmic impact two millennia ago may have sent tsunamis deluging what is now the Big Apple, scientists suggest. Many of the giant sea waves known as tsunamis are caused by underwater earthquakes and volcanoes - for example, the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was triggered by a quake off the northwestern coast of Sumatra. Still, the causes of nearly 10 percent of all tsunamis nowadays remain uncertain. Cosmic impacts have been known to cause tsunamis in the past. For instance, scientists have found evidence that the Chicxulub impact in Mexico, which may have ended the age of dinosaurs, triggered gigantic waves.
Now researchers have evidence suggesting that an asteroid roughly 200 yards (183 meters) wide crashed off the coast of New Jersey and sent tsunamis surging toward what is now New York City some 2,300 years ago. [Cool Video Recreating an Ancient Tsunami]
"Our models suggest the tsunamis were up to 20 meters (66 feet) high when they entered the Hudson River," said researcher Dallas Abbott, a geologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. New York City lies at the mouth of the Hudson. When the scientists drilled out tubes of sediment from the New York and New Jersey area, they discovered layers of unusual debris that, they suggest, were laid down by tsunamis.
Within these potential tsunami layers is evidence of a cosmic impact, including shocked minerals and microscopic carbon beads loaded with "nano-diamonds," which are "all things only impacts can do," Abbott said. One candidate for the crater that was produced by this impact, she said, lies in the undersea Carteret Canyon, located roughly 90 miles (150 km) off the coast of New Jersey.
Other scientists have raised alternate explanations for these layers. For instance, volcanic eruptions or gigantic landslides on the other side of the Atlantic might have caused the giant waves. Or these anomalous layers of sediment that Abbott and her colleagues are investigating may not have been caused by tsunamis at all - hurricanes can generate huge pulses of water known as storm surges, whose effects on sediment could resemble those of tsunamis.
For a cosmic impact, one smoking gun would be a specific form of deformed rock known as shocked quartz. The rock is generated by the intense heat and pressure of a collision with an extraterrestrial object. "But if there was an oceanic impact, the oceanic crust doesn't really have quartz to shock," Abbott said. It there were tsunamis, it remains unclear if ancient Native Americans witnessed them.
Charlie Chaplin's Time Traveler? YouTube Watch the video and decide if the person in the film clip time traveled. I believe the chubby woman is a man in drag ... but why would someone use a cell phone in 1928? This is alleged footage from the movie, yet something feels wrong.
