THE MYSTERIES OF
THE BLUE PLANET

By Neusa Martinez
Translation from Portuguese: Inter Learning Center 

Christmas 2004 was a date marked by the deadly Tsunami that hit Asia and Africa causing the New Year’s Day to be full of uncertainties of a better Year for people all over the world. It is very difficult to forget the images seen last Sunday, in which the waves of the Indic Ocean invaded dry land, hitting eleven countries altogether. It is hard to believe that the beautiful sea withdrew from the beach, thus gaining even more strength and changing into a big water wall, invading the land and colliding against anything ahead of it. Afterward, the terrorizing sea retrieved, but not without taking people along or leaving debris and dead bodies behind it, all over the city. It was one of the ten biggest natural catastrophes ever heard: 156 thousand dead people, of whom (according to estimated data) 50 thousand were kids and almost 5 thousand, were foreign tourists. Thousands of people lost their loved ones, kids were left orphans and to those who survived, there is still the risk of getting diseases.

In the midst of this entire catastrophe, would you be able to guess how many animals died? NONE!!!! No animals that weren’t locked up in cages or cannels were found dead. I just can’t believe that these animals are more in tune with the planet Earth than us, human beings. Not even science can explain why they were so “smart”! We know all these phenomena but we can’t predict neither when and where the next earthquake is going to happen nor which are the safe parts of dry land in case of a seaquake. Our Planet Blue keeps some of its mysteries from us and many of them will be very hard to unveil.

There are two sciences that are dedicated to studying the Earth: Geology and Geophysics. Geology is the science that studies the history of the Earth. It is a history that has been in progress for nearly 4.600 million years and human kind has been in charge of writing it for about 5 thousand years. Geophysics had its start in 1984 in the University of São Paulo (USP). In their website, they explain that Seismology is the branch of Geophysics that studies the earthquakes (or SEISMS): their causes, effects, and the way the waves generated by the earthquake are spread, etc. The observation of those seismic waves was the main tool used to determine the structures of the Earth.

We, poor people of the earth, are now filled with questions about earthquakes, Tsunamis and Volcanoes – theses are 7-headed ogres that have been terrorizing us – and in this column’s edition I hope to clarify some of them. To do so, I contacted Marcelo Assumpção, one of the greatest seismologists of Brazil. In 1973, he graduated in Physics at USP and in 1978 he did his doctor’s degree in Seismology in the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He has been working at USP since 1974, where he is a titular professor and teaches at the Geophysics Course in the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences. 

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