General Overview from S0, including a neato little anomaly with the magnetopause (which, to be honest, I’ve never looked at before):
there’s some interesting discussion in the comments between S0 and Mr2Tuff (usually the case between them) that you might want to look at.
M 7.9 Solar Flare
6.8 EQs off Honshu
However, 6.8 is the low reading– closer agencies saying more like a 7.4 or higher, which is a significant difference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQzqFy7WOtA
dcsymbols notes :
Venus conjoined Jupiter March 13, 2012. Just after that we see 6.9, 6.1, 5.7, 5.4, 5.7 etc quakes off the east coast of Honshu, Japan.
Current Watches:
Some other neato spacey videos. . .
Update: Also, this is interesting– Santorini Caldera has become active again. . .
American Slytherin 
Good stuff today about the Honshu quakes. I can see them being linked to the recent solar activity, but I have a hard time seeing the Venus-Jupiter conjunction having an effect, just because of the miniscule size of the gravity gradient from those planets, especially compared to the very large effect from the Moon. Just don’t see it. However, it’s been cool to watch the two planets doing their little dance in the heavens over the last few nights. 🙂
Thanks for the article about the Santorini caldera becoming active again! That’s really alarming. The first blast was catastrophic, not just for the Minoans (who might have been the basis for Atlantis) when they were wiped out, but also for the whole planet. I’ve explored in the White Mountains in CA and seen the ancient bristlecone pines that live thousands of years, and seen photos of the ring sequences that show one year out of the last 4000 where there was no growth, indicating a year without a summer. That was in the vicinity of 1650 BC, when Santorini (Thera) blew up. Is that what we can expect in the next few years?
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RE: Santorini–I don’t think so. Maybe something more akin to the last time it was active, back in the 1950’s . . . it would have to grow significantly, from what I understand, to equal that Minoan Blow Up
As for the alignments thing. . .that’s just one of the theories out there that I’m tracking. Like the Solar theory, there does seem to be a correlation, but because people are only just getting the data together, and we’d need at least several decades worth of data to be even reasonably sure. . . look, I’ve not got any emotional attachment to any of these theories, but there are patterns emerging already that I find intriguing. And the planetary alignment one has, at least as long as the data has been collected, and as far back as they’ve figured. . . it’s been a rather interesting correllation.
Here’s how I think it might work, if indeed there is some sort of actual link happening here:
First: You have to see the entire Solar System as a coherent, finely tuned system (either by design or by “All the un-tuned bits got smashed into the Asteroid Belt etc. . .”). We know that the biggest influence in this system-as-a-whole is the Sun, followed by Jupiter, thus the seeming link between the Solar Cycle and the orbit of Jupiter. However, each individual planet is effected not just by the Sun and local satellites, but we also know that they are effected by the next neighboring planet– that Saturn, for instance, perturbs the orbit of Jupiter. . .
From Earth’s perspective, after the Sun the largest influence is indeed the most immediate– the Moon. Next would be Mars and Venus, each perturbing the Earth’s orbit one way or the other by relatively small amounts, and pretty much cancel each other out, but still giving the orbit a wobble. The traditional view ends here– sort of that the system is a mostly local thing, that beyond Mars and Venus, nothing else really effects Earth, except as a means of shielding or tossing asteroids our way. . .
However, in this theory, this would be absolutely wrong– the system is a system, a large clockworks of layered gears, and one gear can be influenced by the workings of gears that do not immediately touch it, like a second hand influences an hour hand. Or, to borrow an earlier metaphor, a piano– each planet’s orbit and relative distance between each other striking a “pitch”– and most of these “Pitches” cancel each other out– unless they manage to strike a chord. (I’m slowly working on a RadioFree Treehouse post dealing with harmony that might explain the idea a bit better). Anyway, if a chord is struck, this then is what effects Earth. It doesn’t matter if the chord is played very softly — that it is played at all is what causes the affect. Perhaps “volume” (distance, or number of “pitches” involved in striking the “chord” might have a determination on the size of the affect. . .)
Anyway, that’s the way I see the theory. Seeing the system as a system, not a conglomeration of mini-systems grouped around a star (which seems, often, to be the current viewpoint.) And seeing the relationships in . . . harmonic terms. Overtones and all that. . .
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Thanks for the explanation, and I actually approve of the harmonic approach you’re talking about. I need a lot more work, myself, to really picture it that way, but I like it. My concern about alignment is that it can not be seen (as I understand it) as a “pluck” to the system. Even when the planets line up, that’s still just part of the “tune.” The motion of the system in the frictionless, inviscid gravity field is just part of the way the system is tuned. The “strings” may vary in “tension” during the motion, but there is no “pluck” of the strings unless you get an irreversible, frictional event, like a solar ejection slamming into the Earth’s magnetosphere or the crash of the tides brought about by the gradient of the Moon’s pull on the crust or the sudden freezing up of ice on a side of Europa. But that’s just my concerns. I can’t argue with real correlation with earthquakes. I’ll keep my eyes open, too!
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Grunt – you and the Zoph are making me feel really small with all your talk about harmonics, inviscids and magnetoshperes. Do y’all ever talk in little words the rest of us might unnerstan’? 😀
Only thing I know ’bout harmonics is when James Cotton or Bob Dylan crank on one of ’em! hehe!
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Hah! Almost had to sh00t a man playing a harmonica recently, but it was the boys’ scoutmaster playing reveille on a harmonica at 6am on a cold winter campout. I decided I better not. Especially since he did a pretty skillful job at it! Be a shame to kill off a skilled twanger. There’s not that many of ’em!
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Hey Z, have you seen this weird SOHO video? There’s supposed to be an explanation for it, but I’ve never really seen anything like it, and it’s kinda tough to explain, IMO. What do you think?
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Maahhh~~~ I’mma havta look into this. Cool vid, though. I’ll get back to ya. . .
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No worries, and no obligation to respond. Just thought you’d think this was uber-strange. Weirdness!
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