Tsunamis and Last Week's News and Research

Tsunamis are waves produced by the rapid shifting of large quantities of water. Unlike tidal waves, which are caused by the gravity of the sun and moon, and wind waves, which are created by air moving across the water's surface, tsunamis are produced by sudden, high-energy events, such as underwater landslides, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. Japanese for "harbor wave," a tsunami can occur anywhere there is a large body of water.

> A dayslong series of tsunami waves can begin with a substantial drop in sea level.
> Fast-moving weather systems have created meteotsunamis in the Great Lakes.

Most tsunamis originate on the ocean floor, where converging tectonic plates build pressure as one plate curves and slides beneath another. Like releasing a bent ruler, the sudden pressure release pushes the ocean floor up, and this uplift displaces the entire column of water above the plate boundary. While this shift creates surface waves less than one meter (3.28 feet) high, they can move more than 800 kilometers (497 miles) per hour.

> Why don't all earthquakes trigger tsunamis?

> Watch the formation of a tsunami in a wave tank.

> See how long you'd have to prepare with this tsunami travel time map.  

As a tsunami approaches shallow coastal waters, its waves slow and compress considerably. This concentrates its energy into a smaller volume of water, causing waves to grow substantially in height. Although they can reach shores as walls of water over 30 meters (98 feet) tall, most major tsunamis more closely resemble fast-rising flash floods that recede quickly.

> If out at sea when a tsunami is incoming, boats should move to deeper waters.

> The tallest tsunami in recorded history surpassed the height of the Empire State Building.

Discover more: 

> Since 1610 BCE, the list of deadliest tsunamis has been topped by the 2004 Indonesia event.

> Because seismic waves travel 100 times faster than tsunami waves, scientists use them in tsunami detection systems.

> Explore an interactive time-lapse of reported tsunami events since 1850.

Keep learning by exploring all our findings on Tsunamis here.

In partnership with Frontieras

The ‘Nvidia of Energy’ Has $2.1T Opportunity

Nvidia’s valuation surged by 1,092% in just three years when it became the backbone of AI. But AI has a massive energy problem Nvidia can’t fix. 

As AI data centers begin consuming more power than entire nations like Sweden or Argentina, Frontieras North America’s patented technology can reform coal into high-value commodities like jet fuel and diesel without burning it. Since coal is one of America’s most abundant resources, this creates a reliable source of growing baseload power when the country needs it most. Under a White House that favors energy production on our home soil, Frontieras could unlock up to $2.1T in energy potential.

With the ‘FASF’ ticker reserved on the Nasdaq and over $45M raised from investors, Frontieras is positioned to become a major leader in the space. Invest in Frontieras before the opportunity closes on August 27.*

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In partnership with Frontieras

Lock In ‘FASF’ Before August 27

History was made when Frontieras North America broke ground on its flagship coal refining facility in West Virginia. 

The state’s governor was even present. The company will use the site to reform coal into high-value commodities like diesel without burning it. And it’s opening a door for investors.

Their ‘FASF’ Nasdaq ticker reservation and a perfect storm of market shifts could position the company as a major leader in the space. Invest in Frontieras before the opportunity ends on August 27.*

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News in Context

1440 brings you the knowledge and context behind the week's stories:

Extreme heat and droughts halt nuclear power plant operations across Europe. (More)

> Nuclear power plants rely on water to slow particles emitted by uranium enough that they trigger additional reactions and generate sustainable energy.

> View drought conditions and impacts across the US with the US Drought Monitor.

Designers created a specialized font that fools unauthorized AI scrapers and disrupts their ability to collect accurate website information. (More)

> How do scrapers extract website information, and how are they used outside of AI?

> Try out ShieldFont to see how text looks different to you and AI scrapers.

Streaming platform Twitch revealed that it takes data from content creators and audiences to train Amazon's AI models. (More)

> Acquired by Amazon in 2014, Twitch is best known as a video game streaming platform.

> The creator economy, which includes Twitch streamers, is projected to be worth $480B by 2027.

Scientists presented evidence of a "glueball"—a particle made entirely of gluons—at the International Conference on High Energy Physics. (More)

> Gluons transmit the strong nuclear force, which binds quarks together and keeps atomic nuclei intact.

> Quarks are fundamental particles that combine to form larger particles, like protons and neutrons.

Research Spotlight

Like all great researchers, we love spending time learning about the latest breakthroughs across science and technology. Here's what we found this week.

The theoretical limit to accurately forecasting future weather is about 129 days.

Chinese Academy of Sciences | Wei Zhang et al. Particles of light from the sun introduce uncertainty in the properties of the atmospheric particles they interact with due to quantum mechanics. Researchers found that the increasing introduction of this uncertainty over time would eventually affect all atmospheric particles—the "energy turnover point"—and make accurate weather forecasting impossible, even if meteorologists knew the properties of every particle at some initial time. (More)

> Quantum uncertainty comes from everything exhibiting wave- and particle-like behavior.

> The sunlight that reaches Earth is tens of thousands of years old. 

Scientists track electron motion to create a film of the start of chemical reactions.

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory | Erin Woodward. Using an X-ray laser, researchers documented the extremely fast formation and breaking of chemical bonds in two processes, creating a movie in which individual frames spanned quintillionths of a second. Identified discrepancies between experimental results and computer simulations prompted the revision of existing theoretical models. (More)

> Watch how an X-ray free-electron laser takes pictures of atoms and molecules. 

> Each element gets its unique properties based on the number of electrons in its outermost shell, which are shared or transferred during chemical bonding. 

A stream of stars from a globular cluster was identified outside the Milky Way.

Northwestern University | Amanda Morris. The first such trail of stars observed outside the galaxy was discovered in archival data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Stellar streams from globular clusters—dense collections of stars held together by gravity—can be used to reconstruct a galaxy's gravitational field and compare it with its visible matter to infer its distribution of dark matter. (More)

> Groups of stars born from the same cloud of gas and dust are often found in one of two main types of clusters.

> Simulate the detection of dark matter based on the motion of stars.

Across 23,800 AI-written children's stories, only 2% of characters were female.

University of Washington | Stefan Milne. In a study involving six leading AI models, variations of the same prompt resulted in 57% of characters being gender-neutral or ungendered, while 41% were male. Researchers hypothesize that while AI organizations have sought to avoid gender bias by implementing neutrality in their models, these efforts more strongly erase female characters, suggesting the models have amplified inherited masculine biases from text-based training data. (More)

> Explore the types of biases AI tools can have and where they come from.

> Non-AI algorithms may also be biased based on their programmed rules.

In partnership with Frontieras

Coal’s $2.1T ‘Rockefeller Moment’ Is Here

In today’s dollars, John D. Rockefeller would be worth $435B. But “oil money” is old news, and what’s next might surprise investors: a $2.1T opportunity in “clean” coal.

Frontieras North America is reforming coal into jet fuel, diesel, and other valuable commodities (just like Rockefeller did with oil). With the Nasdaq ticker ‘FASF’ reserved and other big milestones, they’re positioned to become a major leader in the space. Invest in Frontieras before the opportunity ends on August 27.*

Please support our sponsors!

In partnership with Frontieras

Others Burn Coal. This Company Cashes It In.

One lump of coal holds six separate commodities, and almost every company just sets it on fire. Frontieras North America patented a way to pull diesel, jet fuel, and more out of the same ton of coal, without burning any of it. One rock. Six markets totaling $2.1T annually.

Patents across nine countries protect the process, meaning no competitor can replicate it. Invest in Frontieras before the opportunity ends on August 27.*

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Etcetera

> At Disney World, recycled glass is turned into gravel and sand used in greenhouses.

> The most expensive way to show that the Earth is round may be one involving a particle physics experiment.

> If GPS doesn't work when submerged and sonar isn't possible when trying to stay hidden, how do submarines navigate underwater?

> Computer systems create artificial voices by stitching together phonemes.

> Biodiversity in the Idaho wilderness improved after beavers were airdropped using leftover parachutes from World War II.

> Objects can be made invisible using lenses and metamaterials that bend light.

> The world's first chatbot, ELIZA, was developed in the 1960s and could mimic a psychotherapist.
 

> The centrifugal force is a fictitious force, though it's often credited with enabling centrifuges, laundry machines, and potential artificial gravity systems.

> While nearly all fish are cold-blooded—their body temperatures match their surroundings—the opah, or moonfish, is fully warm-blooded.

> Check out the Isolator, a century-old helmet designed to improve concentration.

> If the solar system started as a cloud of gas, how did it become a flat disk with all planets orbiting in the same direction?

> View samples of hiroshimates, the glassy particles made from vaporized material at Hiroshima.