Japan’s Earthquake & Tsunami: How They Happened

On March 11th, Japan suf­fered a 9.0 earth­quake, fol­lowed by a mas­sive tsuna­mi. Just weeks lat­er, NOVA has pro­duced a 47 minute doc­u­men­tary that does an impres­sive job of explain­ing the sci­ence behind these twin geo­log­ic cat­a­stro­phes. The pro­gram fol­lows Roger Bil­ham, a seis­mol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado, who arrived in Japan two days after the quake. And what you get is a blow-by-blow account of the unfold­ing events, cou­pled with some sound analy­sis and stun­ning footage (like the ground split­ting open and push­ing water to the sur­face.) This is by far the most sub­stan­tive treat­ment of Japan’s quake/tsunami that we’ve encoun­tered to date…

via Sci­ence Dump