Unravelling the Tsunami Mystery
Calcutta Telegraph, India
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What really caused last December’s tsunami? No, it wasn’t a gigantic underwater landslide but an earthquake which burst open 1,200 km of a fault line near the Sumatran coast, pushing up a length of an undersea mountain range, reports Anirban Das Mahapatra.
It was a fistful of grey sediment, scooped out from the ocean floor some five kilometres below sea level, that held the answer which had eluded the world for a year. And Indian marine biologist Baban Ingole was among the first to know.
Around eight in the morning of December 26, 2004 — the day when the tsunami swept away close to three lakh lives in south and south-east Asia — an earthquake measuring 9.2 on the Richter Scale burst open 1,200 km of a fault line between the Indian and Asian tectonic plates near the Sumatran coast.
The rupture pushed up a length of an undersea mountain range, causing some 200 trillion tonnes of water to ripple outward faster than a jet plane. In a matter of minutes, the tsunami had hit the coast of Banda Aceh near Indonesia, triggering the worst natural disaster to have hit mankind in recent times. Until recently, anyone attempting to string them together had only frustration to stare at. Simply because the real cause of the tsunami — or the first frame of the storyboard — remained unknown to the world’s scientific fraternity.
For months after the disaster, it debated whether the surge had been caused by a gigantic underwater landslide or a vertical shift of a part of the sea bed. The acid test involved checking a sample of sediment collected from the site for marine life.
The sample did show the presence of life, indicating that the landslide had happened many years ago.
Dec 25, 2005
Calcutta Telegraph, India___________________
What really caused last December’s tsunami? No, it wasn’t a gigantic underwater landslide but an earthquake which burst open 1,200 km of a fault line near the Sumatran coast, pushing up a length of an undersea mountain range, reports Anirban Das Mahapatra.
It was a fistful of grey sediment, scooped out from the ocean floor some five kilometres below sea level, that held the answer which had eluded the world for a year. And Indian marine biologist Baban Ingole was among the first to know.
Around eight in the morning of December 26, 2004 — the day when the tsunami swept away close to three lakh lives in south and south-east Asia — an earthquake measuring 9.2 on the Richter Scale burst open 1,200 km of a fault line between the Indian and Asian tectonic plates near the Sumatran coast.
The rupture pushed up a length of an undersea mountain range, causing some 200 trillion tonnes of water to ripple outward faster than a jet plane. In a matter of minutes, the tsunami had hit the coast of Banda Aceh near Indonesia, triggering the worst natural disaster to have hit mankind in recent times. Until recently, anyone attempting to string them together had only frustration to stare at. Simply because the real cause of the tsunami — or the first frame of the storyboard — remained unknown to the world’s scientific fraternity.
For months after the disaster, it debated whether the surge had been caused by a gigantic underwater landslide or a vertical shift of a part of the sea bed. The acid test involved checking a sample of sediment collected from the site for marine life.
The sample did show the presence of life, indicating that the landslide had happened many years ago.
Dec 25, 2005
