Saving Rain Forest Thread number 57!!

Danon, Anita is a sweetie. I didn't have the opportunity to talk with her, but did interact with her on forums - she's quite a lady.

I guess that must be a left-sided compliment <somehow> calling me and sumac 'guys'. We luv chatting with you too, Dan, and I guess you deserve a smooch - <er maybe not>

oh no, now i'm confused! LOL

<silly>

Teeny, your welcome. We'll all miss Anita lots.

Hi, everyone...

Mt. St. Helens is in the middle of a fairly large steam and ash eruption - estimated at about 40,000 ft. in height. It started around 5:30 PM PST, then slowed and just a few minutes ago, it started erupting from a different part of the dome(s). Here's a link to the Mt. St. Helens webcam

http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volcanocams/msh/

KIRO TV - Seattle
http://www.kirotv.com/news/4266408/detail.html

KING TV - Seattle
http://www.king5.com/

KOMO TV - Seattle
http://www.komotv.com/stories/35624.htm

KGW TV - Portland, OR
http://www.kgw.com/

Hi Matrix! Thanks for the links and information. Dial-up speed slow, and the webcam not visable. Found a photo of the eruption though.

Magginkat...

Welcome to the Rainforest. You will always be welcome here...




...and, thank you for your beautiful tribute to Anita. She was a dear, dear friend.

You're welcome, Stradee. That's a picture of the first eruption right after it started. The second one, which is still going on right now, had more ash in it and the helicopters were able to get pics of the lava oozing out of the dome - and glowing in the dark.

Go to the KING TV website and click on their link for the slideshow of the erruption on their front page. I've got dial-up and it loads in pretty quickly.

Wow Matrix! Just viewed the photos at one of your link sites. That has to be scary! For the people in Washington, and also Portland and surrounding areas.

Tell me you your house safely away from the volcano!

<Beautiful Rainforest photo, Matrix>

Stradee...

Not scary - but fascinating. Now, if Mt. Rainier ever shows serious signs of waking up, I'm outta here! That would be devastating!

Thanks Matrix. After my post, I redialed the network and received a higher speed. The webcam won't be visable till tomorrow, but I placed the page in my favorites - plus viewed the slideshow photos.

It's amazing the amount of ash - and for such a mild earthquake! I just may stay in CA and wait for the state to fall into the Pacific! Who knows, with any luck I'll be able to swim to Nevada! lol

Swimming to Nevada...I remember when everyone thought that we had so much rain in the Seattle area. Ha! Today, it was sunny and 70 here.

Unfortunately, the snow pack is nil and when my mom went to visit my grandma in eastern WA last week, she said that the mountains were pretty much void of snow and that because it had been so dry over on that side of the mountains everything was brown. Not good!

I'm lucky. Where I live, we have our own water supply (from an aquafire) sp? and as usual, we shouldn't have any water restrictions. We just impose our own and try to not waste any water. We also buy plants that don't need a lot of water (exceptions - my Japanese maples and hanging plants).

Stradee,
Thanks for the left handed compliment - I am mostly left handed in real life - but have been ambidextrous all my life. I write with both hands but best left handed - all else is rather confusing to me - like in school I would be asked to do something or other on the blackboard (it was actually black in those days) and I would wonder which hand to use - sounds funny now, but it was bewilderment then.
I think I think left handed - but then I think I think right handed?? Hmmmmmm?? Ah well.

True story.



Matrix!!!!!!!
Wow!!!
The entire West Coast is sliding North!!!!!!!! It's happening as we speak!! The only safe place is going to be here in NE Texas - - - for sure.........

The sliding North part of the above is true - it's part of the "ring of fire" surrounding the Pacific Ocean - (carelessly named!!)

Also, the NE Texas safe place is true too - come on down and be safe....

Everyone else has to continue to click to save rain forest!!!!!!

Lately, I'm creaking here - but, consistently. grin

Danon, did you know that DeVince, Einstein, Telsa, Ben Franklin, and Garfield <the prez not the cat> were ambidextrous? and also basketball and football athletes train to be ambidextrous?

You are a phenomina! <a right-handed compliment>

I guess you could say that Texas <except Crawford> a great place to live, but if I invest wisely, and purchase desert property now, all my heirs will be surfing off the coast of Nevada. <grin>

Thought you might find this article interesting:


Scientists Head Out to Sea to Check on Quake Activity
10:26 PM PST on Friday, March 4, 2005

By JIM FORMAN / KING 5 News


SEATTLE - The race is on to see just what's happening on the ocean floor off the Washington coast.



Thousands of earthquakes in recent days have triggered the rapid deployment of a scientific response team.


KING

Scientists are racing to get the Thomas G. Thompson underway.

Scientists from across the country, even some from overseas, are racing to get the Thomas G. Thompson underway. The ship is headed to the Juan de Fuca Ridge some 300 miles off the coast of Neah Bay.

Scientists believe the swarm of earthquakes could signal the eruption of an underwater volcano with magma oozing.

They are confident, though, that there is no threat from the quakes.

"These earthquakes are not about to generate a tsunami. I think they are too deep," said Dr. Jim Cowan, University of Hawaii.

This scientific rapid response team has been ready to go for years, waiting for the right conditions to launch a mission.

What the scientists learn on this cruise could lead to advances in manufacturing and medicine as they will be collecting samples from the deep.

"You never know what you are going to find and I hope we find something of a lot of interest," said NOAA oceanographer Sharon Walker.

The ship will be out for a week.

This expedition is funded by the National Science Foundation and NOAA. The crew of the Thompson is from the University of Washington.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.king5.com/localnews/environment/stories/NW_030405WABseaquakesKC.108d6782f.html

Here's more:

Swarm of Undersea Quakes Draws Scientists
The Associated Press
Monday, March 7, 2005; 8:30 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15145-2005Mar7.html

Morn'n all,

Clicked..............

What are we going to name the new 51st state after the lava cools and construction begins?????

That could conceivably happen if there is serious volcanic activity offshore from Washington state.

grinnnnnn!!

Matrix, good information! If the plate moving in centimeters, and with thousands of small quakes, by the year 2026, all three states will begin floating toward the Hawaiian Islands. yikes

Danon, ya all can call the new coastal ranges CalWash.Org! <grin>

...to the drawing board!!! ARK!!!

Wondering if the RV (?) Thompson or scientists will ever accurately predict a devastating earthquake or tsnumi.

ponder n' click

Speaking of earthquakes -- we were, weren't we? -- just read in The Atlantic that as of April 15, we should be able to predict them with fair accuiracy. On that date an Italian astronaut is scheduled to arrive at the Internatioanl Space Station. His mission: to activate a first-of-its-kind satellite, the LAZIO, which, it is hoped, will be able to predict tremors on earth four to five hours before they start. Read all about it on page 13 of the April issue. The new tachnology is designed to measure tremors in the earth's radiation belt which, scientists say, are sure tipoffs to an incipient quake.

Thanks Merry Andrews! < web information about the satellite >

Description and Testing of ESPERIA Instruments (ARINA and LAZIO-SIRAD) in Space.

* Sgrigna, V ([email protected]) , University Roma Tre,Department of Physics and INFN Section, 84 Via della Vasca Navale, Rome, ITA I-00146 Italy


ESPERIA is an equatorial magnetic, plasma and particle mission planned with a LEO small satellite for monitoring perturbations in the topside ionosphere and for defining the near-Earth magnetic environment. The project aims at reconcile these phenomena with Sun and Earth activities. So, in principle, Earth natural disasters, as earthquakes, the impact of anthropogenic electromagnetic radiation on the near-Earth space, atmospheric electromagnetic emissions during thunderstorm activity, and effects of sun and cosmic rays on the geomagnetic cavity can be studied by this mission. The ESPERIA Phase A Study, which has been realized for the Italian Space Agency (ASI), is mainly concerned with detecting seismic related signals from the Earth's surface. In particular, electromagnetic emissions related to the strong earthquake and possibly caused by stress changes in the Earth's crust, are a main scientific objective of this mission. ESPERIA includes a modular multi-instrument science payload constituted by a Magnetic Field Analyzer (two flux-gate and search-coil vector magnetometers), an Electric Field Analyzer (a constellation of ten Electric Probes), a Particle Detector, and an Ionospheric Plasma Analyzer (Langmuir Probe and Retarding Potential Analyzer). Most of these instruments are of large use in near-Earth Space investigations, therefore ESPERIA, with some relatively small changes and/or augmentation of its Payload, can easily be adapted for studying most of the applications mentioned above. So ESPERIA can also be seen as an equatorial coordinated and simultaneous complement to polar missions like SWARM, or "Living with a Star" NASA Program, etc. Two ESPERIA instruments (a particle detector and a search-coil magnetometer, included in the ARINA and LAZIO-SIRAD experiments) have been realized and will be tested in space. ARINA, which launch is scheduled for mid-2005 on board the RESURS DK-1 Russian LEO satellite, will perform particle measurements on a polar orbit. LAZIO-SIRAD will be installed on board the ISS next April 2005 to carry out magnetic and particle measurements

Stop disseminating that info, Stradee and Merry Andrew! Did you know we already got sued by tsunami victims claiming we have satellites that spotted the moving wave and were negligent in not warning the populations? We don't need more lawsuits from quake victims - but maybe we could refer those to Italian courts!

Alternatively we could all buy "invisibility suits" - no I'm not making this up:

"Electronic engineers at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia are researching a device they say could make objects "nearly invisible to an observer." The contrivance works by preventing light from bouncing off the surface of an object, causing the object to appear so small it all but disappears.

The concept was reported today by the science news Web site [email protected]. It says the proposed cloaking device would not require any peripheral attachments (such as antennas or computer networks) and would reduce visibility no matter what angle an object is viewed at.

Sir John Pendry, a physicist at Imperial College, London, said the concept potentially holds several important applications "in stealth technology and camouflage." "

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/02/0228_050228_invisibility.html

Hoft, your absolutely correct! Mt. St. Helens erupted today <no pun intended> and geologists are stunned! Yep, there is no way science can accurately predict earthquakes, volcano eruptions, or tsnumis. They can tell us what happened after the fact though. Not very comforting but at the very least allows survivors to relocate or familiarize themselves with the American judicial system. Democracy lives!

Thanks you guys for the interesting science news today.