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CBC
11 hours ago
- CBC
Megathrust fault line off Haida Gwaii confirmed through new imaging
Social Sharing Scientists have confirmed that a fault line off the west coast of Haida Gwaii is of the megathrust variety, capable of generating large earthquakes and tsunamis. The conclusion was gleaned through hydrostatic imaging and measurements of the Queen Charlotte Fault where the Pacific tectonic plate meets the North American plate. The finding was published in Science Advances. The images show that instead of the plates sliding horizontally against each other, the Pacific plate is also colliding with and diving under the North American plate, in a process known as subduction. The friction created by subduction is what creates megathrust conditions, according to UBC professor and study co-author Michael Bostock. "For most of its length, the Queen Charlotte plate boundary is very much like the San Andreas fault — one plate is sliding by the other. But at the southern end, along the coast of Haida Gwaii and in particular southern Haida Gwaii, there is a component of convergence. So not only are they moving... side by side, but they're compressing each other." Bostock said the magnitude 7.7 Haida Gwaii earthquake of 2012 led scientists to understand there was a significant component of "under thrusting" or subduction along the fault line. The new research has now mapped it out in greater clarity. At approximately 300 kilometres long, the Queen Charlotte subduction zone is shorter than the 1,000-kilometre-long Cascadia subduction zone that runs from northern Vancouver Island to Northern California. The Cascadia subduction zone is where the "Big One" is expected — that being the oft-forecasted megathrust earthquake predicted to register magnitude 9 or higher. Experts believe it's just a matter of time before the Big One hits considering that stress between the subducting Juan de Fuca plate and the North American plate has been building up since its last major earthquake in the year 1700. In contrast, Bostock believes Haida Gwaii is not susceptible to a megathrust quake anytime soon. "In my opinion it's very unlikely we'd have another megathrust earthquake off Haida Gwaii within the next 100 years. We're not building stress up fast enough for us to have another one like we just experienced 12 years ago," he said. The western coast of Haida Gwaii has been the site of four earthquakes of 7.0 magnitude or more in the past century, including the largest in recorded Canadian history in 1949 that registered 8.1, according to Earthquakes Canada. University of Victoria professor and study co-author Kelin Wang said the new research helps understand and plan for a megathrust.
National Post
12 hours ago
- National Post
Colby Cosh: The atomic bomb through Oppenheimer's eyes
Can it really be two years since Christopher Nolan's film 'Oppenheimer' became the old-school box-office sensation of summer 2023? Well, there you go, it must have been two years: even a journalist can do that much math. 'Oppenheimer,' which is reasonably scrupulous in its accuracy by cinema standards, continues to be fertile ground for discussion and memes. People will go on talking about the war and the command decision to bomb, but the drama of Los Alamos, N.M., is a distinctive, important historical phenomenon, a little nugget of uncanny magic rearranging human history at the outset of the Jet Age. Article content Article content A cult of wizards was assembled (on a mountaintop, loosely speaking) by a great empire: it was told to come up with a method to drop a sun on its enemies, and they succeeded. As Nolan's movie implies, almost every other thing that happened in the 20th century, including the actual use of the weapon, might be a footnote. Article content Article content Article content If you are suitably mesmerized by these events, one thing to remember is that the record of them is still incomplete. 'Oppenheimer' was made even though documentary material about, and by, J. Robert Oppenheimer is still becoming available to the public, as a new National Security Archive (NSA) release reminded us on Tuesday. The NSA maintains a 'briefing book' of primary sources on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it makes periodic updates with newly declassified or rediscovered materials. The briefing book itself, built up over 20 years, is extensive enough to fertilize graduate-level papers on the decisions surrounding construction and use of the bomb. Article content Article content There are some fascinating new declassified documents in the 2025 update. One is a letter written in September 1944 by William S. Parsons, the navy officer who headed the ordnance group at Los Alamos. Parsons led the creation of the 'gun' design used for Little Boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and he would fly on the mission that delivered it. But he also had an administrative role as a voice of, and pair of eyes for, the professional military among the civilian boffins at Los Alamos. Article content Article content Parsons' letter is addressed to Maj.-Gen. Leslie Groves, overall boss of the Manhattan Project, and was delivered by Oppenheimer, which is why it sits in a file folder among the Oppenheimer Papers at the Library of Congress. Article content The letter is Parsons' rambling argument, extraordinary in historical retrospect, against any mere testing of a nuclear weapon. Plans for what became the Trinity test in the New Mexico desert were already coming into view, and the American high command was then still wondering whether to invite representatives of the Axis governments. Parsons points out morbidly that the most impressive test, the most convincing demonstration, would be to detonate the bomb 'one thousand feet over Times Square.' Short of that, he did not see the point of setting one off in the desert amid a few unoccupied temporary structures when it could just be dropped on an enemy. 'Even the crater would be disappointing.'
CTV News
13 hours ago
- CTV News
Could the U.S. actually build a nuclear reactor on the moon? Here's what an expert says
NASA officials claim the organization is planning to build a nuclear reactor on the moon by the end of the decade. How realistic is this plan?
