8.8 Magnitude Earthquake hits Japan, Tsunami warnings have been issued

[black_mamba]

---

saw the local news... grabeh ug ka isog ning mga japanese oi.. BILIB jud ko nila... nagpabilin jud cla sa ilang lugar... ( referring sa mga laki nga hapones ) kay they say " the community needs them.. " and they are confident nga ang japanese government won't leave them.... WEW!

kato pinay iya nabana... sus! grabeh mura kog kahilakon nagtan.aw sa news nina.....

[Sand Man]

Actually if you know the galaxy, milkyway and you know about science brod Sand Man.

Admittedly, I know very little so I will not make grand statements about how all terrestrial/celestial/heavenly bodies' push and tug at each other will affect my beloved Earth.

Pero, conversely sad, I will not immediately believe any article proclaiming catastrophic disasters without solid evidence, or confirmation coming from various authorities of the subject.

So, if this 'Super Moon' is so danged catastrophic, why the hell is NASA saying we should go all out and look at it on the 19th??

"The best time to look is when the Moon is near the horizon. That is when illusion mixes with reality to produce a truly stunning view. For reasons not fully understood by astronomers or psychologists, low-hanging Moons look unnaturally large when they beam through trees, buildings and other foreground objects. On March 19th, why not let the "Moon illusion" amplify a full Moon that's extra-big to begin with? The swollen orb rising in the east at sunset may seem so nearby, you can almost reach out and touch it. "

source

This so called Super Moon is normal rah....

Agreed. Unsa may problema nato ana?

Moon's axis around the earth is not round but ellipse. Try to read sa gi post nako. Now, if you go to college i'm sure kabalu ka unsay ellipse?

Uh... OK. I got to college.

Normally if ang Moon mo travel na in the center of the earth so obviously it looks like big.

This is new to me.

Reason is he is much nearer compared to other side of his rotation and thats explain why they called it " Super Moon" or big moon... Now tell me where in that part you did not understand and i will explain further especially Gravitational pull between the Moon and Earth or Stars...

Ayaw na. Layo na kaayo ta -- let's stick to Japan. Topic is Japan.

The moon's orbit around Earth is not a circle, but an ellipse. At its closest approach - the perigee - the moon appears brighter and larger in the sky. When it is furthest away - the apogee - it is smaller and dimmer

Ug papilion ka between an astrologer (pirmi man kaha sakto imong horoscope?), and a NASA Chief Scientist, asa man ka motoo?

Dr. James Garvin, chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, answers your questions about the 'supermoon' phenomenon.

The effects on Earth from a supermoon are minor, and according to the most detailed studies by terrestrial seismologists and volcanologists, the combination of the moon being at its closest to Earth in its orbit, and being in its 'full moon' configuration (relative to the Earth and sun), should not affect the internal energy balance of the Earth since there are lunar tides every day. The Earth has stored a tremendous amount of internal energy within its thin outer shell or crust, and the small differences in the tidal forces exerted by the moon (and sun) are not enough to fundamentally overcome the much larger forces within the planet due to convection (and other aspects of the internal energy balance that drives plate tectonics).

source

Finally, what I truly think is nabiktima na ka sa mind conditioning. Maka-paranoid ra ba na .... Please read about mind conditioning, and be aware of its effects and what the big companies want you to feel on a daily basis. Remember, "Fear sells."

Do not believe everything you read. If an article seems too sensational to be true, it probably is.

[Romeojin]

tan-awon lang nato ang super moon ugma .

[stew_griff]

nganong naabot man mog supermoon intawn

[psyd_1]

ON THIS HOUR: Recent Japan Pics

[Sand Man]

There is much suffering in Japan right now.

Regardless of the atrocities the Japanese did to our people during the occupation, my thoughts go out to the people affected by this.

[HanzoHattori]

luoy kaau...

"Please continue to live well. I cannot be home for a while." These words have come to encapsulate the struggle of the emerging heroes of Japan's nuclear crisis.

They were sent by email to the wife of one of the "Fukushima 50" – the middle and low-ranking operators, the technicians, soldiers and firefighters – who remain at the stricken power plant after all others have fled, exposed to dangerously high levels of radiation but fighting to stop it spreading further while haunted by the grim spectre of what may happen if they fail.

"They are running out of food... we think conditions are really tough. He says he's accepted his fate... much like a death sentence," the daughter of one of the workers wrote to a Japanese TV station.

But while the nation is in awe of their sacrifice, they do not know their names, with only the most sparing details available. And although they have become known as the "Fukushima 50", there are in fact about 200 workers rotating in and out of the most dangerous part of the plant 50 at a time, taking turns eating and sleeping in a decontaminated area.

Many of them volunteered for the task, labelled a suicide mission by some nuclear scientists, fully understanding the health risks involved, yet heading back to the heart of an expanding exclusion zone, from which at least 70,000 people have already been evacuated, and a further 140,000 told not to venture outside.

As they work to pump sea water on the dangerously exposed nuclear fuel rods, already thought to be partly melting and spewing radioactive material, 150 miles to the south, British, French, German and American nationals are in Tokyo boarding flights home on the advice of their governments.

Many workers at Fukushima, however, have to ignore any warnings to leave. It was the earthquake that first compromised the plant's reactors last Friday. While the workers tried to stabilise them, they knew a a tsunami was approaching. Thirty-one people have since been killed in the plant's various explosions.

"My dad went to the nuclear plant. I never heard my mother cry so hard. People at the plant are struggling, sacrificing themselves to protect you. Please dad come back alive," read a tweet by user @nekkonekonyaa.

When her father and his co-workers are done crawling through dark mazes, armed with flashlights and radiation detectors, wearing full body radiation suits and breathing through oxygen tanks, they likely will come back alive. But at what cost? Potentially deadly doses of radiation surround them, and their suits do little to prevent radiation from seeping into their bodies. Consequences could range from radiation sickness to long term side effects such as thyroid cancer.

Radiation levels in an hour at Fukushima have been measured at several times over that which a typical nuclear facility worker might be expected to exposed to in an entire career. The government has raised the maximum legal exposure levels in order to allow the work to carry on.

Already comparisons have been drawn between the "Fukushima 50" and "Los 33" – the miners trapped in the Chilean mine last year. But the analogy does not fit. In Chile, a nation hoped and prayed for the safety of the trapped men. Here, they look to the workers at Fukushima to ensure their own safety, bringing to mind Churchill's most oft-repeated quotation: "Never... was so much owed by so many to so few."

[nightzlayer]

Ug papilion ka between an astrologer (pirmi man kaha sakto imong horoscope?), and a NASA Chief Scientist, asa man ka motoo?



Finally, what I truly think is nabiktima na ka sa mind conditioning. Maka-paranoid ra ba na .... Please read about mind conditioning, and be aware of its effects and what the big companies want you to feel on a daily basis. Remember, "Fear sells."

Do not believe everything you read. If an article seems too sensational to be true, it probably is.

This is based on science bro and their theories. If life is at stake bro i will take the risk to save lives. I don't know sa uban if they wl do the same? Just remember how high tide and low tide occur if the gravitational pull of the moon is no effect to earth?

Right now they say na wlay effect? Look at Samar yesterday? Read the news then find out why nag declare sila og state of calamity in the middle of summer time?

I hope nka bantay ka sa weather sa Cebu karon or sa Earth as a whole...

[Sand Man]

This is just heartbreaking to read...

Even amid the carnage and despair of Japan's tsunami victims, the plight of the 30 children at Kama Elementary School is heartbreaking.
They sit quietly in the corner of a third-floor classroom where they have waited each day since the tsunami swept into the town of Ishinomaki for their parents to collect them. So far, no one has come and few at the school now believe they will.

Teachers think that some of the boys and girls, aged between eight and 12, know their fathers and mothers are among the missing and will never again turn up at the gates of the school on the eastern outskirts of the town, but they are saying nothing.

Instead, they wait patiently reading books or playing card games watched over by relatives and teachers, who prevent anyone from speaking to them.
Officials fear that even the sound of the door sliding back might raise false hope that a parent has come to collect them. Their silence is in marked contrast to other children playing in the corridors of the four-storey building, whose parents survived due to a complete fluke.

Sports teacher Masami Hoshi said: 'The tsunami came just when the parents of the middle age group were starting to arrive to collect their children so we managed to get them inside and to safety.

'The younger ones had left with their parents a little earlier. The ones who went to homes behind the school probably survived, the ones who went the other way probably didn't.'

....

He said the Prime Minister was 'a wonderful man in many ways' but indecisive as a leader: 'In yesterday’s press conference on the nuclear reactor, he looked like he was going to cry, like a man having a nervous breakdown.

'Where is the sense of urgency? We need somebody to take charge. We’ve had an earthquake followed by fire, then a tsunami, then radiation, and now snow. It’s everything.

'There is nothing left. The world needs to step in. Where are the Americans? The Japanese are too proud to ask, but we need help and we need it now.'

....

Read more here

[nightzlayer]

Japan cites radiation in milk, spinach near plant
Japanese government says milk, spinach near stricken nuke plant have unsafe radiation
ap

A helicopter, carrying nurses to a town hospital from outside, flies over a wrecked building lying on its side in Onagawa, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, Friday, March 18, 2011, a week after a strong earthquake and tsunami hit northeastern coast towns in Japan. (AP Photo/Kyodo News) JAPAN OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT, NO LICENSING IN CHINA, HONG KONG, JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA AND FRANCE
On Saturday March 19, 2011, 3:25 am

TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's top government spokesman says radiation levels in spinach and milk exceed safety limits following nuclear accidents at a tsunami-stricken nuclear plant.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said checks of milk from Fukushima prefecture, where the plant is located, and of spinach grown in Ibaraki, a neighboring prefecture, surpassed limits set by the government.
It was the government's first report of food being contaminated by radiation since the March 11 quake and tsunami unleashed the nuclear crisis.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

FUKUSHIMA, Japan (AP) -- Emergency teams racing to cool dangerously overheated nuclear fuel scrambled Saturday to connect Japan's crippled reactors to a new power line, as a safety official suggested faulty planning at the complex helped trigger the crisis.
Firefighters also began pumping tons of water directly from the ocean into one of the most troubled areas of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, the cooling pool for used fuel rods at the plant's Unit 3, which is at risk of burning up and sending a broad release of radioactive material into the environment.
Just outside the bustling disaster response center in the city of Fukushima, 40 miles (60 kilometers) northwest of the plant, government nuclear specialist Kazuya Konno took a three-minute break from nearly nonstop work and met with his wife Junko and their children for the first time since a March 11 earthquake and massive tsunami spawned the nuclear crisis.

"It's very nerve-wracking. We really don't know what is going to become of our city," said Junko Konno, 35. "Like most other people we have been staying indoors unless we have to go out."

She brought her husband a small backpack with a change of clothes and snacks. The girls -- aged 4 and 6 and wearing pink surgical masks decorated with Mickey Mouse -- gave their father hugs.

At the plant, a fire truck with a high-pressure cannon parked outside Unit 3, about 300 meters (yards) from the Pacific coast, and began shooting an arc of water nonstop into the pool for seven straight hours, said Kenji Kawasaki, a spokesman for the nuclear safety agency.

A separate pumping vehicle will keep the firetruck's water tank refilled. Because of high radiation levels, firefighters will only go to the truck every three hours when it needs to be refueled. They expect to pump about 1,400 tons of water, nearly the capacity of the pool.

Meanwhile, Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said backup power systems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant had been improperly protected, leaving them vulnerable to the tsunami that savaged the northeastern coast after the quake and killed more than 7,200 people.

The failure of Fukushima's backup power systems, which were supposed to keep cooling systems going in the aftermath of the massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake, let uranium fuel overheat and were a "main cause" of the crisis, Nishiyama said.

"I cannot say whether it was a human error, but we should examine the case closely," he told reporters.

A spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns and runs the plants, said that while the generators themselves were not directly exposed to the waves, some of the electrical support equipment was outside. The complex was designed to protect against tsunamis of up to 5 meters (16 feet), he said. Media reports say the tsunami was at least 6 meters (20 feet) high when it struck Fukushima.

Motoyasu Tamaki also acknowledged that the complex was old, and might not have been as well-equipped as newer facilities.

Plant operators also said they would reconnect four of the plant's six reactor units to a power grid Saturday. Although a replacement power line reached the complex Friday, workers had to methodically work through badly damaged and deeply complex electrical systems to make the final linkups without setting off a spark and potentially an explosion.

"Most of the motors and switchboards were submerged by the tsunami and they cannot be used," Nishiyama said.

Even once the power is reconnected, it is not clear if the cooling systems will still work.

The storage pools need a constant source of cooling water. Even when removed from reactors, uranium rods are still extremely hot and must be cooled for months, possibly longer, to prevent them from heating up again and emitting radioactivity.

As Japan crossed the one-week mark since the cascade of disasters began, the government conceded Friday it was slow to respond and welcomed ever-growing help from the United States in hopes of preventing a complete meltdown at the nuclear plant.

"In hindsight, we could have moved a little quicker in assessing the situation and coordinating all that information and provided it faster," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Friday.

The earthquake and the tsunami also left thousands of people missing.

Rescuers pulled a man alive from a wrecked house Saturday, but reports later said he had returned the building after the disaster and only had been trapped for one day.

Emergency crews at the nuclear plant faced two continuing challenges: cooling the nuclear fuel in reactors where energy is generated and cooling the adjacent pools where thousands of used nuclear fuel rods are stored in water.

Japan's government on Friday raised the accident classification for the nuclear crisis from Level 4 to Level 5 on a seven-level international scale. That put it on a par with the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979, and signified its consequences went beyond the local area.

Edano also said Tokyo was asking Washington for additional help, a change from a few days ago, when Japanese officials disagreed with American assessments of the severity of the problem.

The United States has conducted overflights of the reactor site, strapping sophisticated pods onto aircraft to measure radiation aloft. Two tests conducted Thursday gave readings that U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel B. Poneman said reinforced the U.S. recommendation that people stay 50 miles (80 kilometers) away from the Fukushima plant. Japan has ordered only a 12-mile (20-kilometer) evacuation zone around the plant.

The tsunami knocked out power to cooling systems at the nuclear plant and its six reactors. In the week since, four have been hit by fires, explosions or partial meltdowns. The events have led to power shortages and factory closures, hurt global manufacturing and triggered a plunge in Japanese stock prices.

Most of Japan's auto industry is shut down. Factories from Louisiana to Thailand are low on Japanese-made parts. Idled plants are costing companies hundreds of millions of dollars. And U.S. car dealers may not get the cars they order this spring.

Low levels of radiation have been detected well beyond Tokyo, which is 140 miles (220 kilometers) south of the plant, but hazardous levels have been limited to the plant itself.

The Science Ministry said radiation levels about 30 kilometers (19 miles) northwest of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant briefly spiked Friday to 0.15 millisieverts per hour, about the amount absorbed in a chest X-ray. While levels fluctuate, radiation at most points at that distance from the facility have been far below that. The ministry did not have an explanation for the rise.

Police said more than 452,000 people made homeless by the quake and tsunami were staying in schools and other shelters, as supplies of fuel, medicine and other necessities ran short.

Talmadge reported from Yamagata, Japan. Associated Press writers Foster Klug in Hirota, Japan, and Elaine Kurtenbach, Tim Sullivan, Shino Yuasa and Jeff Donn in Tokyo contributed to this report.

Alert level changed from 4 to 5. I hope neighboring countries are not affected on this?..