A team of American and Russian scientists has discovered an interesting fact regarding the mega-earthquake that hit Japan earlier this year. Namely, they’ve found that the atmosphere above the epicenter heated up rapidly, with the electron content of the ionosphere and infrared emissions experiencing peaks before the quake struck.
What caused this? Well, it could have been number of things, the most realistic explanation being that it was caused by large amounts of radon being released as a result of great stresses in a fault line. At this point that’s only a theory, but if this new data provides evidence to support it, observing the phenomenon could be of great help in the future as it could detect and warn of major earthquakes days in advance. Which would save countless lives and be totally awesome.
Other (not-at-all)plausible explanations include: a not-so-subtle satellite earthquake ray, Godzilla alien activity and/or HAARP.
via technologyreview from arxiv.org
