The Guardian 26 January, 2005
The tsunami and science
Peter Symon
The tsunami that devastated the coastal regions of the countries bordering the Indian Ocean is one of the most destructive natural events of recent times. To the loss of life of over 250,000 people must be added the destruction of houses and infrastructure and the trauma and sickness that followed. It will take years to rebuild both the lives and the infrastructure.
The tsunami is a huge wave of energy imparted to the ocean by the dropping of part of the ocean floor at the boundary or the thrusting upwards of another part of the ocean floor. Tsunamis are caused by a particular type of earthquake which causes a vertical shift in the earth's crust at fault lines marking the boundaries of the tectonic plates on which the solidified landmasses sit. This latest tsunami was created by the fifth largest earthquake since the beginning of the 20th century.
Planet earth was originally a molten mass. As it cooled it formed a solid crust. Cooling also resulted in contraction causing the earth's crust to crack so that, rather than being smooth and unbroken, it was made up of huge plates, floating on the molten core.
Millions of years
These plates move. They may float apart to some extent or, conversely, press against one another. This pressure may result in the formation of mountain ranges as the huge forces press large masses of the earth's crust upwards. At another edge the pressures may result in the edge of one plate being forced (subducted) beneath another.
A report issued by Columbia University states:
"The tectonics of the region [the Indian Ocean] is complex and involves the interaction of the Australia, Sunda and Eurasian plates in addition to the India and Burma plates. The India and Australia plates move north-eastwards at a rate of about six centimetres/year relative to the Burma plate.
"Preliminary locations of large aftershocks following the mega-thrust earthquake show that approximately 1000 kilometres of plate boundary slipped as a result of the earthquake.
"The world's largest recorded earthquakes were all mega-thrust events and occur where one tectonic plate subducts beneath another … As with the recent event, mega-thrust earthquakes often generate large tsunamis that can cause damage over a much wider area than is directly effected by ground shaking near the earthquakes rupture.
"Australia was originally floating on an India/Australia plate but scientists now believe that this plate is cracking into two separate plates.
"Scientists have known that for some 50 million years the India subcontinent has been pushing northward into Eurasia, forcefully raising the Tibetan plateau and the Himalayan mountains. New research suggests that about eight million years ago, the accumulated mass became so great that the Indo-Australia plate buckled and broke under the stress.
"If the theory was correct, the ocean floor in the eastern part of the new plate boundary should be compressed, buckled, cracked and eventually thrust upwards along the cracks."
Scientific investigations have shown this theory to be correct.
A summary of the present earthquake issued by the Columbia University says:
"Earthquakes occur when any of the 12 or 13 plates collide at their boundaries. The present collision is due to compression between the Indian and Burmese plates. Scientists now believe that one plate that comprised the landmass from India to Australia has broken up into two. The initial 8.9 eruption happened near the location of the meeting point of the Australian, Indian and Burmese plates. Scientists have shown that this is a region of compression as the Australian plate is rotating counter-clockwise into the Indian plate. This also means that a region of seismic activity has become active in the South Eastern Indian Ocean."
Wave of energy
The wave of energy created by the earth movement can travel through the ocean at about 500 to 600 kilometres per hour, causing the sea to recede and to return to the raised shoreline. As the energy travels it builds up into a huge water wall washing over everything and then sucking back into the ocean everything that can be carried by its tremendous energy.
This is not the first tsunami to devastate some Indian Ocean countries. No warning system is yet in place to cover the Indian Ocean as there is for the North Pacific Ocean. If such a warning system had existed for the Indian Ocean, the loss of life could have been substantially reduced. A warning system would have given time for many communities to move to higher ground, depending on their distance from the epicentre of the earthquake.
More tsunamis are inevitable and it is essential that the establishment of a warning system covering the Indian Ocean and other regions where tectonic plates are colliding be established as a priority. The technology already exists.
Although US research centres sent out a warning, the only island in the Indian Ocean to receive a warning was Diego Garcia, because it is the location of a US Naval Base. Australian and Indonesian authorities were also warned but not others. Clearly, adequate procedures were not in place in Indonesia to deal with the event.
This tragic event shows however, that nature is constantly changing and that some changes span millions of years. Huge forces are involved that dwarf anything so far created by humankind.
These events can, and must, be explained by scientific investigation and, with sufficient knowledge future events may be predicted.
There is absolutely no space for the belief that this and other natural events are acts of a god.
(see Culture and Life of this issue).
Nature is the creator
In the case of the tsunami nature is the creator and the destroyer in a process of constant change.
It was a Polish astronomer Copernicus, (1473-1543) who threw down the gauntlet to ecclesiastical authority and declared that the earth turned on its own axis and moved around the sun and not the other way around as was proclaimed by the creationists.
"The emancipation of natural science from theology dates from this act, although the fighting out of the particular antagonistic claims has dragged out up to our day and in many minds is still far from completion". (Dialectics of Nature, Frederick Engels p 320.)
Nonetheless, the scientific explanation has steadily gained ground and this is now the only explanation that stands the demands of truth.
It was Karl Marx who put religious beliefs in their historical perspective:
"Man makes religion, religion does not make man…Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people. To abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand their real happiness."
(From Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law. Marx-Engels Collected Works Vol 3, page 175-176.)