Major Tokyo quake more likely than govt says - academics

TOKYO (Reuters) - A major earthquake is far more likely to hitTokyo in the next few years than the government predicts, researchers at the University of Tokyo said on Monday, warning companies and individuals to be prepared for such an event.

There is a 70 percent chance a magnitude 7 quake will jolt the southern part of the Tokyo metropolitan area in the next four years, the university's Earthquake Research Institute said.

In contrast, the government estimates a 70 percent probability of such an event in the next three decades.

A magnitude 9 quake, the strongest on record in Japan, and subsequent tsunami devastated the northeast coast last March. It left up to 23,000 dead or missing and wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, triggering power shortages and a radiation leaks that caused mass evacuations and widespread contamination.

A government survey says a magnitude 7.3 quake centred in the north of Tokyo Bay would cause about 11,000 casualties and destroy around 850,000 buildings, though one of the University of Tokyo team said it was hard to predict the impact of a major quake on the city.

"The chance that a magnitude 7 earthquake will happen (in the area) has increased since the March quake," said Shinichi Sakai, an associate professor at the institute.

"At this time, the government, individuals and corporations should prepare for that."

A government official said the Tokyo University estimate was based on a different model from the one it uses. The university calculations take account of the greater seismic activity since March, while the government uses older data.

There has been a fivefold increase in the number of quakes in the Tokyo metropolitan area since the March disaster, the research team said, basing its calculations on data from the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Japan, situated on the "Ring of Fire" arc of volcanoes and oceanic trenches that partly encircles the Pacific Basin, accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.

A magnitude 7.3 quake hit central Japan in 1995, devastating the port city of Kobe. It killed more than 6,400 people and caused an estimated $100 billion in damage.

The Great Kanto earthquake of 1923 had a magnitude of 7.9 and killed more than 140,000 people in the Tokyo area. Seismologists have said another such quake could strike the city at any time.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/major-tokyo-quake-more-likely-govt-says-academics-101045412.html

The 310TH

Award Vote

Accident or Intelligent Design?

Science and the Origin of Life

The debate over human origins has intensified, hitting the mainstream media like a tsunami. The debate is really about God, and whether or not our origins are explainable without him. Atheists such as Richard Dawkins are attempting to prove that science and belief in God are incompatible. Their premise is that the material world is all that exists. And if science has eliminated God as the source of all life, then the late materialist Stephen Jay Gould was correct in his view:

“Human life is the result of a “glorious evolutionary accident" Stephen Jay Gould

But new insights into our universe belie such a simplistic view. Quantum mechanicshas revealed that our material world is based upon an invisible world of subatomic particles that is totally non-material. And over 95% of our universe consists of dark matter and energy that is beyond scientific observation. Also, scientists are openly discussing dimensions beyond ours where walking through walls and teleportation could be realities. The dilemma for materialists is that these areas are beyond the purview of science.

In spite of such mysteries, materialists single-mindedly proclaim their faith in a purposeless universe without any underlying intelligence. But Gould's and Dawkins' materialistic view does not reflect the opinions of an increasing number of scientists who are seeing fingerprints of design in our universe. Others don't go so far as to advocate intelligent design, but admittedly see evidence of a "superintelligence" behind creation.

Surprisingly, what has triggered the debate are stunning new discoveries from several scientific disciplines. It is these discoveries that have convinced some scientists that there is compelling new evidence for intelligent design. These scientists are not interested in bringing religion into the science classroom. However, they see no conflict between science and faith, and want the evidence to speak for itself about whether an underlying intelligence exists.

In fact, modern science was actually born out of the Christian belief that God was rational and personal. Early scientists such as Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon, Newton, Pascal, and Faraday, believed in the biblical God of objective truth and order. Philosopher Francis Schaeffer notes, it was the biblical belief that the world was created by a reasonable God that gave scientists confidence in being “able to find out about the world by observation and experimentation.”

Many scientists today do believe in a creator. But there is a huge range of beliefs on the creative process. Some scientists believe God created everything outside of natural laws, while others believe He designed or directed natural laws to create our universe and life within it. However, many who speak of an underlying intelligence in the universe are agnostics who are simply reporting objective evidence for somethingor someone that Einstein labeled:

"an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."Albert Einstein

Einstein, rarely discussed God, but he was in awe of the "superintelligence" revealed in nature. Since Einstein, many other leading scientists have revealed stunning new insights about our origins. These new insights have come in the past few decades, primarily from the three scientific disciplines of astronomy, molecular biology andpaleontology.

Click to continue reading about the Origin of Life and Astronomy.

http://www.y-origins.com/index.php?p=about

Ancient Mayan Rituals Revealed by Ordinary Objects

The torso and pelvis of this body, found in the floor of one of the homes Lucero excavated, had been removed. A matate and mano, used for grinding corn, were found near the right knee. A deer antler and pink quartzite stone were buried beneath the chest area. CREDIT: Image courtesy of Lisa J. Lucero

Ancient Mayans farmers, builders and servants left records of their daily lives with the objects they embedded in the floors and walls of their homes during rituals in which their houses were burned down and then rebuilt, giving archaeologists today a window into everyday Mayan life.

Many of the more famous records of the Mayan civilization come from the writing and images about royals carved into monuments..............

Red and rebirth

Lucero and her crew found about a dozen human remains and other objects in two homes they excavated in a small Maya center called Saturday Creek in central Belize. The homes were occupied from about 450 to 1150.

The team found partial skeletons of men, women and children, with artifacts arranged around and even on top of the bodies.

Colors, such as red, which represented the east, life and rebirth, were commonly used in these burials. Sometimes an unbroken red vessel was inverted over a skull or kneecap. Red items were generally found on the east side of the body or group of artifacts. The use of this color, instead of black, more associated with death, could be a reflection on how the Maya viewed death.

"The Maya believed in a cyclical way of living," Lucero said. "So to their way of thinking, people don't die as much as become ancestors."

Other artifacts — including groups of obsidian or chert rocks — represented the Maya belief in the nine levels of the underworld or the 13 levels of heaven.

Vessels were a significant part of dedication rites, and Lucero found bowls and jars that were in perfect condition when they were buried, suggesting they were crafted specifically for the occasion.

The team also found vessels used in termination rites that had their rims broken off or damaged with a "kill hole" drilled through their bottoms. Lucero also found jars without bases or necks and vessels stacked in groups of three, along with bowls placed lip-to-lip with stores of organic matter (possibly a food offering) inside them.

"Things that were used in life had to be de-animated, terminated, before they entered the next stage of their life history," Lucero said. Pieces of broken vessels were likely given away or placed in other sacred sites, she added.

Lucero suggested that perhaps the Maya revered the fragments of vessels or the bones of their ancestors in the same way that people today cherish religious relics, and in the same way that the Maya rulers and elite did so.

In her 2006 book, "Water and Ritual: The Rise and Fall of Classic Maya Rulers" (University of Texas Press, Austin, 2006), Lucero argues that rulers reinforced community cohesion, as well as their own high status, by adopting traditional domestic rituals and transferring them to a grand scale.

"Nearly everything royal emerged or developed or evolved from domestic practices," Lucero said. "So it makes sense to turn that around and use what we know about the rulers to interpret what we find in the commoners' homes."..........

PLEASE READ MORE HERE;

http://www.livescience.com/6347-ancient-mayan-rituals-revealed-ordinary-objects.html