4 ms·
This is going to sound a little weird, but can we plug those holes? I'm really not sure I want tectonic plate lubricant leaking out of the crust.
by 1attice 4y ago
This is going to sound a little weird, but can we plug those holes?
I'm really not sure I want tectonic plate lubricant leaking out of the crust.
- rootusrootus 4y agoI kind of agree, but OTOH I don't think I want anyone to be playing around with the limited knowledge we have. Maybe they'd inadvertently trigger the 9+ quake. Whoops.
- klyrs 4y agoYou'd rather that pressure build up and have it blow out elsewhere?
- yellowapple 4y agoAs long as it's not in my back yard.
- arcticbull 4y agoIt's already under the ocean in nobody's backyard lol
- ceejayoz 4y agoThe resulting tsunamis, unfortunately, may take out a whole bunch of backyards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1700_Cascadia_earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1700_Cascadia_earthquake
- arcticbull 4y agoFirst thing I thought of was that tweet asking why we can't just fill volcanos with concrete to stop eruptions. The answer why not is here. [1] [1] https://www.iflscience.com/yes-you-can-plug-a-volcano-with-concrete-if-you-want-to-make-things-far-far-worse-67718 https://www.iflscience.com/yes-you-can-plug-a-volcano-with-c...
- hackeraccount 4y agoWhat about doing the opposite of this? Like, if you can tell pressure is building up in a volcano just blow a few holes in it or around it. Preferably with nukes because I don't believe in half-assing this sort of thing.
- theandrewbailey 4y agoWhat's worse than a big cloud of volcanic ash? A big cloud of fallout.
- malwarebytess 4y agoModern nuclear weapons do not have significant fallout. Fallout is lost yield.
- notnaut 4y ago[flagged]
- stametseater 4y agoThat's mostly wrong, particularly in the context of the proposal above. Fallout comes not only from the unfissioned nuclear material of the bomb, but also from the fisson byproducts and from neutron activation of other bomb components, such as the bomb case. And with a ground burst, or worse a bomb buried deep enough to create a very large crater (the above proposal), a huge amount of fallout is created through the neutron activation of the ground itself. This is true even with extremely efficient fission-fusion-fission bombs (e.g. thermonuclear bombs which use depleted uranium tampers), which produce a massive amount of neutron radiation and a great deal of fallout from the fission of the tamper which is caused by the fusion stage.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 4y ago
- oh_sigh 4y agoThe flow rates are estimated at ~500 ml/s. That seems pretty negligible in the grand scheme of things. It really says more about our sensor data that we were even able to detect that small of a leak in a giant ocean.
- LostLocalMan 4y agoThat's about 6.3 olympic swimming pools a year. Olympic swimming pools are the only true way to measure volume.
- zwieback 4y agoI work on inkjet nozzles. One of our drops is maybe 9 nanograms. According to Wikipedia that's about 9e-9/2.5e9 = 3.6e-18. No problem, we'll start specifying our drop weight in atto swimming-pools.
- stickfigure 4y agoBe sure to use the metric system! I'd like a half-micropool of beer, please.
- blackoil 4y agoThats about 30870 humans pee in a year.
- Arrath 4y ago30870 individual urination events, or the annual urine output of 30870 humans?
- lsllc 4y agoI'm going to need that in: * Libraries of Congress * Football Fields
- robocat 4y agoTry https://www.theregister.com/Design/page/reg-standards-converter.html https://www.theregister.com/Design/page/reg-standards-conver... It is an imperial converter, and lacks most modern American units such as Libraries of Congress. A benefit is that it has some local units: Area (nanoWales - nW), Force (Norris - No), Length (linguine - lg), Temperature (Hilton - Hn) etcetera.
- maxbond 4y ago(I am not a geologist.) Presumably if the water had enough pressure to punch a hole it has enough pressure to punch another. I'd wager these holes are occasionally covered by underwater landslides and the like. I'm curious what makes you uncomfortable about it?
- dylan604 4y ago>I'm curious what makes you uncomfortable about it? The same thing that makes them uncomfortable looking under the bed at night.
- 1attice 4y agoWhat makes me uncomfortable is that this shit is the lubricant for the plates, right? And I live on top of the subduction zone? This is pretty straightforward. Ever had a car that leaked a lot of oil?
- maxbond 4y agoSo you're thinking that if more lubrication stayed under ground, the plates wouldn't stick together so much, and they wouldn't store tension? (I'm not saying you're wrong, I have no idea.)
- johndunne 4y agoI don’t think there’s a need to ‘plug the hole’. The article suggests that there’s hot water flowing out from under the sea bed but what’s more likely (and normal) is that there’s a fracture of exposed magma that’s heating the water at the seabed. This heated water is convecting up and mixing with the surrounding sea water, with the hot water mixed to ambient sea temperature before it hits the surface. The methane is normal from such fractures. They’re not normally permanent features and are analogous to magma flows on the surface of the earth.
- tracerbulletx 4y agoThe whole premise of the article and paper is that the water its self is from the plate boundary. "The seep fluid chemistry is unique for Cascadia and includes extreme enrichment of boron and lithium and depletion of chloride, potassium, and magnesium. We conclude that the fluids are sourced from pore water compaction and mineral dehydration reactions with minimum source temperatures of 150° to 250°C, placing the source at or near the plate boundary offshore Central Oregon."
- cronix 4y agoAnd what eventually happens to tectonic plates that build up pressure, which this vent is helping to release?
- alwaysbeconsing 4y agoThe article says that (as far as they can tell) the liquid pressure helps reduce the plate friction, so leaking actually contributes to stress build up: > Fluid released from the fault zone is like leaking lubricant, Solomon said. That’s bad news for earthquake hazards: Less lubricant means stress can build to create a damaging quake.
- dclowd9901 4y agoWouldn't it be better to breach them, or create other breaches elsewhere? (like scoring glass before you break it apart) It seems like, ideally, we'd be able to redirect the cascadia fault line elsewhere.
- anonymouskimmer 4y agoThe fault lies where the two plates collide. This can't be redirected. At absolute best, over the course of millions of years, you could break larger plates up into smaller plates and make a bunch of smaller faults. I don't know that this would ultimately be beneficial, and I have no clue how humans could do it.
- MikePlacid 4y ago> It seems like, ideally, we'd be able to redirect the cascadia fault line elsewhere. To Canada!