can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ?

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can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/13/2011 5:52:02 PM

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From: Tamaris
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Simply that, given the fact that some 2000 detonations of nuclear devices have occurred under the name of testing such things, the resultant explosion creates vibrations in the ground, could these vibrations antagonise already unstable plates that are in the pacific especially. ?

How much extra vibration is required to destabilise faults in the plates that our lands are on.

Fair enough, the continental plates are grinding up against each other, and every shift results in a shock that reaches the surface and travails those that live nearest to a greater or lesser extent, the planet and it's motion are enough, but here comes man and his nuclear technology, is it possible nuclear detonations are speeding up the movement of the plates , given the fact that an underground detonation of whatever megaton of TNT on the ground is a bloody lot. Every detonation of explosives creates vibrations in the earth, many feel it before they know it, given that, could underground nuclear detonation be effecting the tectonic plates ?

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/13/2011 6:05:57 PM

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The question is a good one, and after a bit of research I found the following:

Nuclear Explosions and Seismology

quote:

Analysis of local seismic recordings (within a couple of miles) of nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site shows that some tectonic stress is released simultaneously with the explosion. Analysis of the seismic wavefield generated by the blast shows the source can be characterized as 70-80 percent dilational (explosive-like) and 20-30 percent deviatoric (earthquake-like). The rock in the vicinity of the thermonuclear device is shattered by the passage of the explosions shock wave. This releases the elastic strain energy that was stored in the rock and adds an earthquake-like component to the seismic wavefield. The possibility of large Nevada Test Site nuclear explosions triggering damaging earthquakes in California was publicly raised in 1969. As a test of this possibility, rate of earthquake occurrence in northern California (magnitude 3.5 and larger) and the known times of the six largest thermonuclear tests (1965-1969) were plotted and it was obvious that no peaks in the seismicity occur at the times of the explosions. This is in agreement with theoretical calculations that transient strain from underground thermonuclear explosions is not sufficiently large to trigger fault rupture at distances beyond a few tens of kilometers from the shot point.

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/13/2011 7:00:38 PM

ThatDamnedPanda

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Aneirin

Simply that, given the fact that some 2000 detonations of nuclear devices have occurred under the name of testing such things, the resultant explosion creates vibrations in the ground, could these vibrations antagonise already unstable plates that are in the pacific especially. ?

..... is it possible nuclear detonations are speeding up the movement of the plates , given the fact that an underground detonation of whatever megaton of TNT on the ground is a bloody lot. Every detonation of explosives creates vibrations in the earth, many feel it before they know it, given that, could underground nuclear detonation be effecting the tectonic plates ?

Sorta yes, sorta no. On the one hand, yes - in theory, an underground nuclear explosion can release just enough energy to jar a locked fault junction loose if there's enough tension built up at the boundary. In fact, back about 40 years ago, I recall a lot of talk about using small nukes along fault lines specifically to release the locked-in tension at a controlled rate, as a way of preventing massive quakes.

But as for your question about whether a nuclear detonation can actually speed up the plates, the answer to that is a definite no. There's not enough plutonium in the entire solar system to actually move a tectonic plate. A plate weighs quadrillions of tons - probably even in the quntillions. There is nothing in the power of humans to move anything with that much mass even a fraction of a millimeter, and there almost certainly never will be. They move at their own pace, and we have no way at all to propel them. Any earthquake that might be triggered by a nuclear explosion is an earthquake that would have happened anyway, the next week or the next month or whatever.

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/13/2011 9:52:44 PM

kdsub

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I would guess the tests would need to be right on top of a fault if it were to have any affect at all...but I think it could trigger a quake under the right circumstances.

Here in the US there has been a swarm of small quakes in Arkansas...in an area thought not to be quake susceptible. There has been speculation that the quakes were triggered because of water injections around natural gas wells.

If something that small can trigger a quake I would think it possible an Atomic explosion could as well.

Butch

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/13/2011 11:47:13 PM

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Thanks, I wondered about this whilst I was watching the devastation caused by the tsunami in Japan and remembering back into my past where I was involved with blasting a six foot diameter tunnel through rock, my job as the trainee site engineer was to operate the seismograph recorders a mile away from the blast site. Only a six foot tunnel, but when the detonation happened a mile away and twenty metres underground, the seismograph site pulsed and the recorders went haywire. The seismograph recordings had to be done for insurance purposes, so that we could not be blamed for cracks appearing in properties, or things falling down. On the actual blasting, only fifteen foot at a time the charges were set to detonate within a fraction of a second with each other so the explosion would not go outwards but be confined to the area we were cutting, in this case a pretty neat circular hole through rock which would then be lined with concrete segments and back fill grout to create a tunnel that would carry sewerage under a city. In my whole time with tunneling, only one house actually fell down due to our activities and that was not where we were blasting, but because the action of the tunnel being cut through fairly unstable old coal mining areas where the mine plans were not always accurate or complete, the reduced pressure the tunnel created in the ground disturbed a water main which burst and there jetted all the surrounding material into the tunnel the result of which, a house nearest to the tunnel collapsed along with the road in front.

Here I will go off topic in my own thread to say memories of my years in civil engineering have some similarities on the now, and I think it is worth conveying what I have remembered from then, is basically the same as now with what is happening in our current political world ;

The only problems we had with what we were doing was the fact that the Northern police were a tadge touchy about the fact that we were blasting and had quantities of high explosive and the fact that the company I worked for was an Irish tunneling company with an Irish explosives expert/powder monkey. This in a time when the IRA bombing campaign in England was at it's zenith. In that circumstance I learned how people of a certain country can be persecuted by our security establishment, because of what terrorists from that same country were doing, which I see draws parallels with the current threat from terrorists that are using a certain religion to spread fear in the west in our current times. The overriding thought appears to be, because a bunch of ass holes of a certain ethnicity are doing x, therefore it stands the rest of them are suspect, which could just plain be a case of police powers of deduction which seems to have leaked into the public mentality.

The hassles we had on that job from the Northern police bordered on the insane, as even after all background checks had been performed and checked again and again, ad finitum, suspicion was plain to see, they quibbled about the small quantities, weight in grammes that was changing due to the fact that the explosive in warm conditions liquified and ran out of the gelignite packaging, there changing it's weight. We were certain the plod believed someone, i.e. the powder monkey was pinching grammes of explosive to cause terrorist actions. But I do understand that gelignite was generally thought to be the explosive of choice for activist groups due to the civilian use of the stuff in quarrying and mining, but the persecution was very plain to see and further I can see why those from the same ethnicity/ religion can be turned from nothing to do with any troubles, to hate and possible participation in fear mongering, even if not for the purposes of making a political point, but pure out and out punishment for those of the persecuting ethnicity/religion. As it was the company I worked for, the workforce were not overly fond of the English because of the hassles from the UK police, but at that time anyone that was Irish in England fell under suspicion as soon as they opened their mouths and declared the fact that they were Irish by their accent.

< Message edited by Aneirin -- 3/14/2011 12:00:05 AM >

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/14/2011 12:31:13 AM

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"There is nothing in the power of humans to move anything with that much mass even a fraction of a millimeter, and there almost certainly never will be."

Not true, but I will agree that the effect even if measurable would be insignificant. At least for the most part.

But - now FRing - there is something more important I think. it is totally unprovable but hear me out. All this nuclear testing can have one hell of an effect on the weather if not a few other things related. Know why ?

Do you know how a speaker works ? When they blow something off it displaces air. If they blow it off underground it makes the Earth's surface into a giant subwoofer. Sound is in essence rapid variations in barometric pressure, and with your ears in your livingroom you are lucky to hear anything from the speakers at 20Hz, the supposed lower limit of human heaaring. But if you had a woofer with the radiating area of say a half a square mile, and pumped it, you could cause a change in the wind. That is impossible to argue against, the only point to resolve is whether this effect is negligible or has a significant effect on the ecology.

With such a large radiating surface, I can't be sure. You'd have to figure out the load, I guess in kilotons, and then weight those figures for whatever you can find as to whether it moved an acre 1/132nd of an inch, or a square mile 0.000000001". And do not think that is miniscule. From my study of audio, going from a 12" to a 15" radiating "surface" the cone only has to move half as far to attain the same low frequency output, on average. That's only three inches. Double it, triple it, take it to the size of a baseball field and see how far it has to go. But the frequency output is much lower than we can hear. Yes there is a sound even though noone can hear it.

What exact effect this has is inestimable, as such of course it shouldn't be done. Why did they keep testing these things when they already knew they worked ? Who set the times and places ? Could someone have a greater understanding of the subject thant I, and be a total asshole ? Nihilistic to the point of wanting to destroy the world ?

Tell me it ain't possible so we can get a good night's sleep.

T^T

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/14/2011 1:46:07 AM

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Oh yes T, I have considered that one a while back, the above ground testing, how much heat it creates and how much air is combusted, not to forget of course the force of the explosions and how they could possibly influence air movement. i have also considered the amount of above ground testing in such a short time period, could it have heated the air we now experience as perhaps global warming or climate change, bearing in mind our ionosphere insulates our world.

Now I am not particularly impressed with nuclear weapons, Nagasaki and Hiroshima created that stance, but I do recognise them as perhaps the ultimate peace keeper and so I believe their existence has prevented major war after the second world war where they were tested on people. But the continuous testing of the things I believe served as reminders to the rest of the world that the possessors of that technology, were not to be pissed around, basically nuclear testing was muscle flexing or cases of my dick is bigger than yours with competing countries.

A very compelling animation and a very sobering thought check out late 50's onwards, it goes mental

But a time back with my arts, I did a reactionary exercise in art and compared bullets, rockets and nuclear devices to Freud's phallic stage of development, in that I was supposing those that seem to like these things of death, ( get hard possibly), do so, because they have failed to develop beyond Freud's phallic stage of development, the penis and it as a weapon, the similarity being obvious via shape.

An example by another artist

My design was to create an M60 machine gun and have the rounds as peni, but my college didn't like my ideas, too political for them, which kind of goes against what I always understood art colleges were supposed to be the breeding grounds for, but then my college is funded by big business, one wonders what big business, although I could find out, if I cared to look.

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Everything we are is the result of what we have thought, the mind is everything, what we think, we become - Guatama Buddha

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/14/2011 1:56:11 AM

TotalDiscipline

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale

this will give you information..if it can..or not can

richter scale 4 equals a small atomic bomb

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/14/2011 2:25:37 AM

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Yeah, and if you understand how bels work, 7 is ten times 4. And 11 is ten times 7.

Hitting 8.9 is alot of bels, which is the same type of scale as decibels.

T^T

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/14/2011 2:31:17 AM

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"My design was to create an M60 machine gun and have the rounds as peni,"

You should be able to get a job with Pink Floyd.

In the US the car was the personal phallic symbol. Mine was the biggest and best of course :-)

But now I see things how they are and I don't need symbology any more. Well once in a while it may help, but personally I don't need it anymore. There are many who do, who think visually. For them, art is necessary.

T^T

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/14/2011 3:27:11 AM

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I am I believe a visual learner, I need imagery to learn, ( my excuse for all the porn I view), but I learn from pictures, not words, so symbology is big with me.

And if it comes to cars as symbols of virility, I wonder what could be made of my vehicular choices, Vintage Land-Rovers, VW motor homes and anything out of the ordinary, current desire, a Citroen Acadiane, but the Chinese clone bike comes before that, got to at least finish something I start.

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Everything we are is the result of what we have thought, the mind is everything, what we think, we become - Guatama Buddha

Conservatism is distrust of people tempered by fear - William Gladstone

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/14/2011 3:31:04 AM

TotalDiscipline

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Termyn8or

Yeah, and if you understand how bels work, 7 is ten times 4. And 11 is ten times 7.

Hitting 8.9 is alot of bels, which is the same type of scale as decibels.

T^T

you mean logarithms?

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/14/2011 3:34:35 AM

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Yup, 3.163 is ten times.

T^T

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/14/2011 3:44:02 AM

TotalDiscipline

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ten times would be 1 bel ( 10 times the acceptable sound pressure....what ever that might be)
bel = log 10
1 bel = 10^1 = 10

oh well..might be wrong..it is a long time ago

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shorten your answers to the essence

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/14/2011 3:48:05 AM

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Not a big issue really. If you understand the logarithmic progression the numbers are not all that important. In sound reproduction it gets more complex by almost an order of magnitude because of the relationship between watts, and volts or amps, and which is predominant in any given environment. It was a very fascinating subject really.

T^T

< Message edited by Termyn8or -- 3/14/2011 3:49:30 AM >

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/14/2011 6:25:28 AM

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They're on "Godzilla" not "Superman: The Movie" in japan at the moment, mate...

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/14/2011 1:55:19 PM

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It's been awhile here, but I thought that it was a 3 dB increase in watts for doubling of power, 6 dB for voltage.

"dB" would be "decibells" for others here. Don't ask me why the seismologists lack the good sense of audio engineers and just knock the last zero off so they don't have to say "6.2 on the Richter scale" all the time instead of just saying it was 62 dB. But I won't press the matter further.

As to another question that Termy presented to the audience some couple of months ago, regarding why some judges (or somebody like them) couldn't even figure out how to find a 6BQ5 tube (that would be "valve" for the British, "Röhre" für die Deutscher),

Wake up man, you know as well as I that they walked right past a whole shelf of EL84 tubes, muttering "wherizzit? wherizzit" all the while.

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/14/2011 7:50:09 PM

ThatDamnedPanda

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Termyn8or

"There is nothing in the power of humans to move anything with that much mass even a fraction of a millimeter, and there almost certainly never will be."

Not true, but I will agree that the effect even if measurable would be insignificant. At least for the most part.

Absolutely true.

Let's take a very small plate, the Caribbean Plate. It's a little more than a million square miles, about a million two. We'll round down, and call it a million.

It's mostly oceanic, so let's say it has an average thickness of 10 miles. So, we have a total volume of 10,000,000 square miles.

Calculate the number of cubic feet in a cubic mile, and you get a figure of 147,197,952,000. So, you have a total of 1,471,979,520,000,000,000 cubic feet (1.471 quintillion cubic feet) of mass in the Caribbean Plate.

Multiply that by the weight of granite (166.5 lbs per cubic foot) and you get a total weight of 245,084,590,080,000,000,000 lbs - almost 2.5 sextillion tons of mass. And that's just a very small plate - 1.2 million square miles. The Pacific Plate is 39,000,000 square miles.

If you can explain to me some sort of man made mechanism that can move 2.5 sextillion pounds, I'd be very interested in knowing what it is. Until someone does explain it to me, I'm going to continue to maintain that there is absolutely nothing humankind to do to impart momentum to a mass of that scale.

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/14/2011 9:56:30 PM

kdsub

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But what if natural force was built at a fault line... would it not be possible for a blast to be the proverbial last straw and trigger the quake? It is known that one quake can trigger another so why not an atomic explosion?

Butch

< Message edited by kdsub -- 3/14/2011 10:08:09 PM >

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RE: can nuclear testing set off eathquakes ? - 3/14/2011 10:38:50 PM

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Beat me to it, Butch.

Any two plates that are in contact have some amount of potential energy existing at all times, which is normally constrained by their own mass and the surrounding counter pressure. When a certain threshold is reached, the potential energy is released as kinetic energy, what we call an earthquake.

I'm not arguing one way or another regarding nuclear blasts causing an earthquake or not, just pointing out that a nuclear explosion being incapable of moving a certain mass would not make a good argument, being that we are actually talking about stored energy more than we are about mass in this case.

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