All about earthquakes, where the heavens shake and the earth cracks

Earthquakes are tectonic shifts in the earth’s crust that cause massive rocks in the ground to suddenly break apart, shaking the ground and buildings and splitting the earth’s surface like a turtle’s back. This causes mountain collapse, coastal collapse, ground slippage, landslides, rumblings (seismic booms), luminous phenomena, and movement of groundwater and hot springs. Earthquakes …

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What is liquefaction?

Liquefaction is a phenomenon in which a loose sandy soil layer behaves like a liquid when the effective stress is reduced by the generation of excessive interstitial water pressure due to vibrations such as earthquakes and instantaneous shocks, and the shear strength within the sandy soil layer is lost. It can cause ground settlement or …

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Heat shimmers and mirages, the mysterious atmospheric phenomena created by differences in air temperature

For the uninitiated, a mirage is a mysterious trick of the air. Gaspard Monge (1746-1818), a mathematician who traveled with Napoleon’s army, was the first to discover the cause of this phenomenon. He realized that the mirage was caused by a layer of hot air bordering the desert. The difference in temperature and density of …

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What is climate?

How is climate different from weather? The dictionary defines climate as “the average state of atmospheric phenomena in a given region over a long period of time. Whereas weather is an instantaneous atmospheric phenomenon that changes from moment to moment, climate is the sum total of long-term atmospheric phenomena. Climate is more of a time …

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What is a thunderstorm?

Lightning Lightning is a spark discharge that occurs between separately accumulated negative and positive charges in a cloud, or between a charge in a cloud and a phone induced on the ground. The discharge between the charges in the clouds is called intra-cloud discharge, cloud discharge, or inter-cloud discharge, and the discharge between the clouds …

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What is Tufaf?

Travertine is a type of freshwater limestone composed of carbonate minerals precipitated at room temperature. Travertine is composed primarily of calcium carbonate, is commonly white to cream in color, and is characterized by high porosity. Similar freshwater limestones to travertine include travertine and speleothem, but they differ in their environment, formation process, and lithologic characteristics. …

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Spectacular eruptions, volcanoes

In 2010, the eruption of the Merapi volcano in the centre of the Indonesian island of Java paralysed airports and displaced thousands of people, and in April of that year, thousands of flights at European airports were grounded when ash from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland became airborne. In fact, volcanic eruptions are one of …

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