Saturday, September 1, 2007

Giant volcano set to wipe out Manchester, England

Not really, but they are having a series of small earthquakes, and without good monitoring, discussions are getting weird. First, we have this article which says Manchester is rising very quickly. Then we have this article with the memorable Pythonesque quote: "There is no volcano rising under Manchester."

What is similar between the two? Despite other previous swarms, there appears to be inadequate seismic monitoring. They really should put in a dense network, since I suspect we have a similar mechanism to our own earthquake zones. The satellite thing is ridiculous, since these things drift tremendously when you have no ground truth. Had they put in the proper real-time GPS, we would know.

Nobody takes these things seriously, but an M5 or M6 right under Manchester would be something! Perhaps the Manchester zone is just a baby, with no threat of a large earthquake, but who knows?

No comments: