6 ms·
City workers destroy 'Holy Grail' for earthquake scientists
- brianvan5155 10y ago"City Workers Repair Earthquake Fault" give em a bonus this year
- slg 10y agoThis is an interesting topic, but the article isn't particularly good or informative. It doesn't do anything to explain the actual scientific importance of this, if there is even one, or if this was just a notable relic showing the real world results of known geological processes. The term "Holy Grail" also doesn't seem to apply to this at all. That term is usually reserved for something that is almost impossible to find, but would be incredibly valuable if it was discovered.
- jofer 10y agoAs a geologist, there's no scientific importance to that specific curb at all. It is a really frequent field trip stop, though. A lot of people go there when they lead field trips (I have too), and it winds up in a lot of photos. Mostly, it's a convenient photo-op in an easily accessible area. It's certainly not the only offset curb, but it arguably makes the nicest photo. There are a lot of vineyards in the area that give much more impressive examples of active tectonics, i.m.o. - It's more clear that there's a gradient of deformation. All this having been said, though, there is very frequently a lot of tension between the local department of transportation and geologists. There are a _ton_ of very significant geologic localities that have been destroyed to widen roads despite geologists begging the DOT find another way. Of course, many of these localities are roadcuts in the first place, so it's a bit hard to convince people of their significance. Also, in case anyone's wondering why the "fault" looks like the boundary between to slabs of concrete: The actual surface trace of the fault isn't exactly at the boundary of the two slabs. It's just that one slab is mostly on one side, and the other slab is mostly on the other side. The slabs are rigid, so instead of breaking, they slide past each other.
- aaroninsf 10y agoJohn McPhee's Pulitzer-winning _The Annals of the Former World_ is arguably 1000 (wonderful) pages made _possible_ by road cuts... something he gleefully expounds upon. Geologists don't get budgets to do section hills to check out their innards. Strangely, federal highway builders do... and do. Presto! Tons of fresh data just waiting for you to pull over and check it out...
- jofer 10y agoThat is absolutely true. I have a friend that refers to the local highway dept as "the department of outcrop construction". That's also why you should never be in a car with a geologist at the wheel... We spend far too much time looking at the rocks and far too little looking at the road.
- mikestew 10y agoDid I miss the part where seismologists told the city, "hey, if you ever want to 'fix' this part, could you let us know first so we can discuss options?" Because, though I didn't read every word in the article, it sounds to me like the scientists woke up one day to a fixed curb and then complained because the city didn't just osmotically know this "common knowledge". As to the city getting around to fixing something that was known to be broken in the 70s, well, that kind of snark just writes itself.
- GavinMcG 10y agoThey weren't even fixing it, really – just happening to install a new ramp at the location.
- kej 10y agoIt's covered in the article; the city had no idea and welcomes geologists to inform them of any significant sites in the future.
- burkaman 10y agoI think this is just supposed to be an interesting offbeat article, nobody is really seriously complaining. The tweet about the city destroying a "classic geopilgrimage site" is mostly tongue in cheek, her next tweet was https://twitter.com/mikamckinnon/status/746477175994408960 https://twitter.com/mikamckinnon/status/746477175994408960
- ianphughes 10y agoAgreed. I noticed that as well since I also follow Mika McKinnon. However, now I just noticed something strange. I'm blocked by Emily Lakdawalla? Since I never speak to people on Twitter, I must follow somebody which qualifies me for a block list. I really dislike that concept.
- sjclemmy 10y agoYeah, the link titles language is terribly pejorative.
- 10y ago
- virtuexru 10y agoShow us a damn picture of it fixed! /OCD-Rage
- lurkinggrue 10y agoOCPD.
- 6stringmerc 10y agoTallest: "You made the fires worse!" Zim: "Worse...or better?"
- GavinMcG 10y agoThey couldn't bother to call up a freelance photographer in Hayward and get a snapshot of the repaired curb! (Or even post something on Twitter like "Hayward readers – we need a quick favor! DM if you have a camera and half an hour. Credit given.")
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- takeda 10y agoI just googled it, and looks like it is work in progress and probably that's why they did not show the picture. Anyway, here it is: https://oaklandgeology.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/rosepros-jun2016.jpg https://oaklandgeology.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/rosepros-... And article from where it comes from: https://oaklandgeology.wordpress.com/2016/06/27/loss-of-an-icon-the-hayward-faults-roseprospect-curb/ https://oaklandgeology.wordpress.com/2016/06/27/loss-of-an-i...
- joveian 10y agoMuch nicer article, thanks. Maybe the link and title could be changed to that? Even as clickbait titles go, "Holy Grail" is quite bad.
- niccaluim 10y ago"…the eastern half of the curb got pulled north, while the other side got pulled south." Is that right? The picture seems to show the opposite, and I thought the Pacific Plate was sliding north, relative to the American Plate.
- morgante 10y agoHow can you tell which side is north?
- niccaluim 10y agoYou can't, but it doesn't matter. They state that the curb runs perpendicular to the fault. No matter which way you rotate it, the "east" side is being pulled south.
- Sanddancer 10y agoIt is, however, this isn't the plate boundary. The Pacific Plate is sliding northward, however, the fault boundary for the plates is the much better known San Andreas Fault. The Hayward fault is parallel to it and a few dozen miles east of it.
- cossatot 10y agoYou're right. The Hayward fault is a right-lateral fault, striking northwest (parallel to the San Andreas) and the west side moves north relative to North America. The reporter made a booboo.
- abecedarius 10y agoHas anyone tried to make a timelapse video out of these photos over the decades? Much more interesting than a pic of it fixed. (I didn't find anything out of a quick search.)
- anotheryou 10y agoAt least it's just something sentimental, not some super important measuring-point :)
- ChuckMcM 10y agoI think "destroyed" is going to far, they "reset" the measurement. Just because the curb is realigned does not mean it won't pull apart still. Now that it is "fixed" it would be a good time to install a pair of steel reference standards on the two curbs, then measuring the shift would be easier in the future.
- mjard 10y agoI'd really like to see a statue somewhere (not in the road) that'd show these changes over time.
- astrodust 10y agoProbably a few feet to the left wether they like it or not.
- fitzroy 10y agoDon't blame the city workers; it's not their fault.
- yuhong 10y agoThinking about it, I wonder where startups are likely to relocate if the big earthquake happens.
- macintux 10y ago5 feet west and 20 feet down.
- astrodust 10y agoThis very phenomenon is why doing GIS work is infuriatingly difficult. A GPS gives coordinates relative to a constellation of satellites, but given how a large chunk of California is drifting a measurable distance, using absolute coordinates would mean all your data on the location of buildings, property lines, and underground infrastructure is increasingly inaccurate. The real world is a complicated, ugly place.
- cossatot 10y agoThis is unfortunate for infrastructure but is why we're able to use GPS to measure plate tectonic motions. The geologic consequences of (relative) plate motions are also unfortunate for infrastructure, as well... Out of curiosity, I just checked to see where the fastest velocity on earth relative to a no-net-rotation reference frame is. Using data from the Global Strain Rate Map[0] (I think this is the study, I was emailed the dataset by the first author a couple of years ago), the maximum velocity is on the Philippine Sea Plate immediately east of Taiwan, clocking in at 471 mm/yr. So any undersea points measured in lat/lon (i.e. WGS84) will be inaccurate at almost half a meter per year (or 0.000005 degrees). [0]: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GC005407/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GC005407/full
- andyjdavis 10y agoCurious how you could solve that. I guess you would need to time stamp the coordinates. Then if you had data on how each region has moved you could calculate new coordinates over time. Sounds painful.
- astrodust 10y agoThere's many, many frames of reference you can use to map your GPS data into actual on-ground coordinates. There's a number of systems that do this, but usually it's done with a projection from abstract GPS points into real-world positions via something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Geodetic_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Geodetic_System
- ajmurmann 10y agoThis reminds me of the cleaning person who cleaned up a modern art piece that was all about the stains: http://m.dw.com/en/cleaning-lady-destroys-contemporary-sculpture-with-her-scrubbing/a-15510231 http://m.dw.com/en/cleaning-lady-destroys-contemporary-sculp...