Submarine Earthquakes for Dummies

How tsunamis form

For the answer to the question supposedly answered by today's DotD nominee, one need only look at recent world news. The residents of Java, the world's most populous island, are only too aware of  the answer to "What Happens if There Is an Earthquake at the Bottom of the Ocean?" They know from first-hand experience that such seismic events can generate tsunamis. It's a safe bet, however, that they didn't extract the basics of their knowledge, from the Sciencing.com post written by Cornelus Postell.

What the heck, we cheerfully admit that Postell at least got the answer right, albeit redundantly:

"When earthquakes happen underwater, it can result in a tsunami wave."

We said "redundant" because tsunami means "harbor wave" in Japanese, so "tsunami wave" is (bilingually) redundant the same way "Rio Grande River" is redundant... not that permissive grammarians care (but we do). We didn't come here to complain about redundancy, though; we came here to gripe about scientific illiteracy and misinformation.

Here's some of what Cornelus tried to tell his readers:

"Strike-slip, dip-slip and subduction are the three types of earthquakes." "Strike-slip eartquakes [sic] occur when the ocean floor moves back and forth." "Dip-slip earthquakes happen when the ocean floor moves up and down." "Subduction earthquakes form when plates of the earth's crust stack on top of one another." "On the ocean floor, the Earth's crust is a series of rock islands that are floating. These rock islands, or plates, are constantly shifting throughout time. These plates can eventually rub against, bump into or drift away from each other. " "An ocean floor earthquake happens when two plates push against each other and form a new underwater island." "An ocean earthquake commonly occurs between 200 and 1,000 years."

Ugh: we only made it about a third of the way through Postell's garbage before our geology specialists were all in the loo upchucking breakfast. One came back, however, to correct the crap Cornelus wrote – at least the seven stupidities listed above.

1. Most geologist list four earthquake types: explosion, tectonic, collapse, and volcanic.
2. Strike-slip is a sense of fault motion; one fault block moves sideways relative to the other.
3. Dip-slip is also a sense of fault motion: one fault block moves vertically relative to the other.
4. Subduction is a type of tectonic plate interaction: one plate overrides the other, which slides downward into the mantle.
5. Oh, crap, that is such a bad description of tectonic plates that I think I need the emesis basin again.
6. WTF is this "new underwater island" crap? How can it be an island if it's underwater?
7. Heaven only knows what the moron was saying here...

Quite possibly the most moronic claim from Postell's article is that, "As [a] new island suddenly pops up, the force of this action creates a huge wave that travels great distances."
As we patrol the backwaters of the internet for Dumbass of the Day candidates during 2019, we are certain to look back on Postell's work as having set a low bar indeed for complete and total dumbassery. Congratulations, Cornelus, you are already the in the lead for Dumbass of the Year!

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