[HN Gopher] Warm liquid from Oregon seafloor comes from Cascadia...
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Warm liquid from Oregon seafloor comes from Cascadia fault
Author : gmays
Score : 120 points
Date : 2023-04-13 17:38 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washington.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washington.edu)
| 1attice wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| cronix wrote:
| And what eventually happens to tectonic plates that build up
| pressure, which this vent is helping to release?
| alwaysbeconsing wrote:
| The 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.
| klyrs wrote:
| You'd rather that pressure build up and have it blow out
| elsewhere?
| yellowapple wrote:
| As long as it's not in _my_ back yard.
| arcticbull wrote:
| It's already under the ocean in nobody's backyard lol
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The resulting tsunamis, unfortunately, may take out a
| whole bunch of backyards.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1700_Cascadia_earthquake
| arcticbull wrote:
| First 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-c...
| hackeraccount wrote:
| What 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 wrote:
| What's worse than a big cloud of volcanic ash? A big cloud
| of fallout.
| malwarebytess wrote:
| Modern nuclear weapons do not have significant fallout.
| Fallout is lost yield.
| stametseater wrote:
| That'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.
| notnaut wrote:
| [flagged]
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| The tectonic plates would just laugh at a nuclear
| explosion. They have infinitely more pressure and force at
| work vs. a bomb blast.
| phkahler wrote:
| Nukes can be comparable to small earthquakes. This fault
| doesn't even have small quakes, it's locked so tight.
| maxbond wrote:
| I think the nukes are going to be a lot more dangerous than
| the volcano, and now we have fallout and an erupting
| volcano.
|
| I've heard a suggestion that we aggressively harvest
| geothermal power from a volcano in order to cool it. But
| geothermal power can itself trigger earthquakes, and I'm
| not sure it's realistic we could harvest power at a rate to
| move the needle on cooling a volcano.
| kizunajp wrote:
| > But geothermal power can itself trigger earthquakes
|
| Did not know this and it took me down a rabbit hole,
| starting at this article from the Scientific American:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35561206
| shanebellone wrote:
| "I think the nukes are going to be a lot more dangerous
| than the volcano, and now we have fallout and an erupting
| volcano."
|
| Oddly the eruption might help mitigate the resulting
| fallout.
| DamnInteresting wrote:
| Not nuclear, but the U.S. Army Air Corps once tried this in
| Hawaii: https://www.historynet.com/army-tried-to-stop-
| mauna-loa-erup...
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| > Volcanoes like Mount St Helens explode with huge amounts of
| pressure, making the added concrete a danger to health as it
| is easily scattered around. "The dust from concrete," YouTube
| channel What If notes, "would lead to fatal lung diseases and
| cancer."
|
| Whereas volcanic ash and gas (released in large amounts) is
| safe to breathe? \s
| pc86 wrote:
| Would you rather have X amount of carcinogenic material in
| the air, or X+Y where Y>0?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| That's about 6.3 olympic swimming pools a year. Olympic
| swimming pools are the only true way to measure volume.
| lsllc wrote:
| I'm going to need that in:
|
| * Libraries of Congress
|
| * Football Fields
| dylan604 wrote:
| American Football (throwball) or International Football
| (soccer)?
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| When you say "Libraries of Congress" do you mean the
| volume of their collection or the volume of the building?
| robocat wrote:
| Try 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.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Especially when you're already doing it at the bottom of
| the ocean.
| blackoil wrote:
| Thats about 30870 humans pee in a year.
| Arrath wrote:
| 30870 individual urination events, or the annual urine
| output of 30870 humans?
| zwieback wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Be sure to use the metric system! I'd like a half-micropool
| of beer, please.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Wouldn'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 wrote:
| The 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.
| maxbond wrote:
| (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 wrote:
| >I'm curious what makes you uncomfortable about it?
|
| The same thing that makes them uncomfortable looking under
| the bed at night.
| johndunne wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| The 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 150deg to
| 250degC, placing the source at or near the plate boundary
| offshore Central Oregon."
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Fascinating stuff, and pretty serendipitous to find it based on a
| weather hold and a "hmm, that's weird." kind of thing. One of the
| things a marine biologist said to me that struck me was "There
| are more unexplored areas on this planet than explored, they just
| happen to be below water."[1]
|
| I often wonder if there is some way to harness these things
| (seeps) given they often spew methane (which could power gas
| turbines), and have the kinetic energy in the shooting water
| which a water turbine could harness. If you were seasteading that
| might make for a good destination point where you could set up
| your power station on the ocean floor.[2]
|
| But another interesting point might be to create some sort of
| observatory here to take measurements and correlate those with
| seismic activity of the fault. The next time this fault lets go
| it is going to do a lot of shaking and tidal waving. Any warning
| could be really really helpful in saving lives.
|
| [1] This in a conversation about "What do research wildlife
| biologists do given how much we already know about wildlife on
| this planet."
|
| [2] Yes "crazy engineering challenges, yada yada yada" :-)
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Peter Watts' (of Blindsight fame) novel Starfish revolves
| around geothermal harvesting of this rift as you describe. Fun
| read. https://www.amazon.com/Starfish-Rifters-Trilogy-Peter-
| Watts/...
| 2mur wrote:
| Full text from Watts' site:
|
| https://www.rifters.com/real/STARFISH.htm
| rektide wrote:
| "Rifters" series also has some of the most grimdark-fun &
| chaotic versions of the "net" that I've ever read.
|
| I had an absolute blast with so far the first two books.
| Watts' mastery of psychology & neurosis & suspense is
| captured in an incredibly tightly confined dark scary
| isolated space at the bottom of the ocean. The setting here
| is just so exceeding. What a series (so far).
| andrewflnr wrote:
| GPT has me worried that Watts's net was prescient. We're
| really looking at a world where people set AIs to write
| their emails, which are read by AI.
|
| That's not the grimdark part of the series though.
| aaroninsf wrote:
| I... would not describe that trilogy as a fun read, though I
| think you were being sardonic in as much as the premises
| throughout are apocalyptic and nihilistic.
|
| Whenever the CSD and the JdF fault are mentioned, I scan to
| see if this trilogy is mentioned, and if so, if a content
| warning is attached.
|
| I have many ties thought, I would like to recommend this to
| people as disaster-porn,
|
| but (not unlike Accelerando), I can't, generally,
|
| because it is also unremittingly disturbing BDSM torture-
| porn.
|
| I have wondered recently whether with the help of AI tools
| like Hyperwrite, one could excise that content and leave the
| other aspects coherent.
|
| TLDLR if Watts isn't a hardcore devotee of BDSM, crossing
| over into fetishization of torture especially of women, you
| wouldn't know it from these novels.
|
| A shame as the stuff about the rift itself is quite good.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I only recall a couple segments in the fourth book of that
| nature, all skippable. "Fun read" doesn't have to be "happy
| ending".
| VintageCool wrote:
| I agree that the Achilles Desjardins torture porn was
| disturbing, but I've always interpreted it as an argument
| against Utilitarianism, and not BSDM porn per se. It's a
| more vividly disturbing version of The Ones That Walk Away
| From Omelas.
|
| Watts sets up Desjardins as a Utilitarian demon, an evil
| that we tolerate because his specific evils are less than
| the overall good he provides the world.
|
| In the end it turns out that the overall good he provided
| the world was a deception, and the man was revealed to have
| been pure villain for the entirety of books 3 and 4.
|
| But yeah, I agree with you that I'd prefer to have not read
| those scenes. I'll still recommend Starfish, but not its
| sequels.
| pfdietz wrote:
| All of Peter Watts' work is delightful and pleasant. He's
| well known for this! /s
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I just loved how happy and not existential crisisy at all
| Blindsight and Echopraxia made me feel!
|
| Although come to think of it, Portia _would_ be a good
| name for some near-gen AI model...
| GalenErso wrote:
| Obligatory reading.
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big...
|
| > Take your hands and hold them palms down, middle fingertips
| touching. Your right hand represents the North American tectonic
| plate, which bears on its back, among other things, our entire
| continent, from One World Trade Center to the Space Needle, in
| Seattle. Your left hand represents an oceanic plate called Juan
| de Fuca, ninety thousand square miles in size. The place where
| they meet is the Cascadia subduction zone. Now slide your left
| hand under your right one. That is what the Juan de Fuca plate is
| doing: slipping steadily beneath North America. When you try it,
| your right hand will slide up your left arm, as if you were
| pushing up your sleeve. That is what North America is not doing.
| It is stuck, wedged tight against the surface of the other plate.
| pugworthy wrote:
| A classic.
|
| Paleoseismology is a pretty fascinating area of study that
| involves Japanese tsunami records, tree ring studies,
| indigenous people's stories, and more to create a record of
| past events; sometimes with unexpected certainty. The last
| Cascadia event for example occurred around 9 PM or so on
| January 26, 1700.
|
| This Wikipedia article goes into details of the last one and
| can help explain how it's known even about what time it
| occurred:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1700_Cascadia_earthquake
|
| You can still see tree stumps on some Oregon beaches at very
| low tides, which I would presume were submerged suddenly on
| occurrence of one of the past earthquakes. Here's an article
| about the "Ghost Forests" in Oregon:
| https://beachconnection.net/news/ghostfor010912_650.php
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| There's an entire petrified forest that apparently became
| marsh overnight.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Obligatory reading because we are quite unprepared for this
| disaster.
| jstanley wrote:
| How is it possible that A goes under B without B going over A?
| vikingerik wrote:
| The edge of B is basically a crumple zone.
| GalenErso wrote:
| > Without moving your hands, curl your right knuckles up, so
| that they point toward the ceiling. Under pressure from Juan
| de Fuca, the stuck edge of North America is bulging upward
| and compressing eastward, at the rate of, respectively, three
| to four millimetres and thirty to forty millimetres a year.
| It can do so for quite some time, because, as continent stuff
| goes, it is young, made of rock that is still relatively
| elastic. (Rocks, like us, get stiffer as they age.) But it
| cannot do so indefinitely. There is a backstop--the craton,
| that ancient unbudgeable mass at the center of the continent
| --and, sooner or later, North America will rebound like a
| spring. If, on that occasion, only the southern part of the
| Cascadia subduction zone gives way--your first two fingers,
| say--the magnitude of the resulting quake will be somewhere
| between 8.0 and 8.6. That's the big one. If the entire zone
| gives way at once, an event that seismologists call a full-
| margin rupture, the magnitude will be somewhere between 8.7
| and 9.2. That's the very big one.
|
| > Flick your right fingers outward, forcefully, so that your
| hand flattens back down again. When the next very big
| earthquake hits, the northwest edge of the continent, from
| California to Canada and the continental shelf to the
| Cascades, will drop by as much as six feet and rebound thirty
| to a hundred feet to the west--losing, within minutes, all
| the elevation and compression it has gained over centuries.
| Some of that shift will take place beneath the ocean,
| displacing a colossal quantity of seawater. (Watch what your
| fingertips do when you flatten your hand.) The water will
| surge upward into a huge hill, then promptly collapse. One
| side will rush west, toward Japan. The other side will rush
| east, in a seven-hundred-mile liquid wall that will reach the
| Northwest coast, on average, fifteen minutes after the
| earthquake begins. By the time the shaking has ceased and the
| tsunami has receded, the region will be unrecognizable.
| Kenneth Murphy, who directs fema's Region X, the division
| responsible for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, says,
| "Our operating assumption is that everything west of
| Interstate 5 will be toast."
| cronix wrote:
| Here's a great video by Nick Zentner, who teaches at Central
| Washington University, on that article and has a lot of updated
| info and debunks some claims made.
|
| Nick Zentner- Earthquakes: Will Everything West of I-5 Really
| Be Toast?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW4D6OE7Qkc
| billiam wrote:
| Geologist here (by training). I know HN readers are instant
| experts on everything, except reading the entire article I guess.
| All the geoengineering suggestions are amusing, but there is
| nothing we can do about the (hypothetical) stress buildup on the
| Cascadia Fault. There are lots of ways to measure stress and
| determine which segments of a fault are locked, this direct
| observation of a single seep being one very anecdotal example. We
| have instrumented and observed the hell out of other faults for
| decades, and we have increased our ability to predict earthquakes
| by ~0%.
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(page generated 2023-04-13 23:00 UTC)