...and devastating Japanese jolt.Astronomer K. Maeda normally studies high-frequency radio emissions from Jupiter. But in the predawn pre·dawn n. The time just before dawn. pre  dawn adj. hours of Jan. 17, 1995, his antennas picked up some pulses that could not have come from that distant planet. Forty minutes later, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake devastated dev·as·tate tr.v. dev·as·tat·ed, dev·as·tat·ing, dev·as·tates 1. To lay waste; destroy. 2. To overwhelm; confound; stun: was devastated by the rude remark. the town of Kobe, Japan (SN: 1/28/95, p.54). A researcher at the Hyogo College of Medicine in Nishinomiya, Maeda points to several pieces of evidence that link the radio emissions to the earthquake, which started 77 kilometers from his observatory. Unlike the Jovian signals, which vary continually because of Earth's rotation The Earth's rotation is the rotation of the solid earth around its own axis, which is called Earth's axis or rotation axis. The earth rotates towards the east, which can be observed by orientation with a magnetic compass at sunrise. , the signals recorded on Jan. 17 were constant, indicating that they came from Earth. Maeda could also tell that the emissions came from the general direction of the earthquake's epicenter ep·i·cen·ter n. 1. The point of the earth's surface directly above the focus of an earthquake. 2. A focal point: stood at the epicenter of the international crisis. on the Nojima fault. He suggests that stress variations in the ground before the quake Quake - A string-oriented language designed to support the construction of Modula-3 programs from modules, interfaces and libraries. Written by Stephen Harrison of DEC SRC, 1993. caused the radio emissions. Earlier this year, other researchers reported that changes in water chemistry preceded the Kobe quake (SN: 7/15/95, p.37). |
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