megaquake

This vertical cliff consists of soft mud deposited on the Japan Trench bottom and was uplifted ~60 m by the 2011 megaquake. This was the first time that the fault scarp of a trench-type earthquake was observed and visually recorded. Credit: Niigata UniversityOn September 4, 2022, Hayato Ueda, a geologist from Niigata University, embarked on a submarine journey alongside pilot Chris May into the heart of the Japan Trench, the epicenter of the catastrophic 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake and tsunami. Descending to the trench’s…

This vertical cliff consists of soft mud deposited on the Japan Trench bottom and was uplifted ~60 m by the 2011 megaquake. This was the first time that the fault scarp of a trench-type earthquake was observed and visually recorded. Credit: Niigata University On September 4, 2022, Hayato Ueda, a geologist at Niigata University, boarded a submarine vehicle with pilot, Chris May, and took a dive into the Japan Trench within the…

One of planet Earth’s single worst days ever occurred around 66 million years ago, when a huge asteroid slammed into Earth and wiped out most life, including the dinosaurs. Now a pair of new studies has identified more evidence for just how bad things got, as the impact triggered global tsunamis almost a mile high and mega-earthquakes that rumbled for months afterwards.The Cretaceous period came to an abrupt end when a 10-km (6.2-mile)-wide asteroid (or swarm of asteroids, or maybe a comet fragment) smashed into what is…