being a minor geology fan (though to be honest mostly just sedimentary geology) i've had a new and kinda fun rock related experience...
so there i was patrolling, as we security guards do, the lobby of the otago museum...
when suddenly the whole world started wobbling!i'm serious everything including me start to shake like crazy!
by george... not sure what that means? other than they say it movies a lot when weird stuff happens... i thought, i think i'm in the middle of my first earthquake!
see new zealand pretty much as a country is the geologic battle ground for two major tectonic plates. the pacific plate is going under, or subducting for you scientific types, the indo-australian plate. this means that a few kilometres under new zealand a lot of potential energy builds up, and occasionally gets released in the form of one of these fun quakes.
it also makes both islands powder kegs of possible volcanism... fortunately (and i guess a little unfortunately) not the geologic phenomenon i'm experiencing today...
just being from landlocked alberta, which is situated on the border of a LONG dead plate boundary in the rockies, i've never felt an earthquake before.
the odd thing though, listening to the news on the radio, this at moment wasn't a normal earthquake....
not because dunedin doesn't get earthquakes... far from it. part of the fault line runs RIGHT through the city.
rather it wasn't picked up or felt anywhere but here in dunedin... which is really weird!
earthquakes should spread their energy out a long ways till it runs out. this one was perfectly localized. it's got everyone, especially the countries geologists, a little confused.
i personally think it's kinda a cool unusual event. unlike the other one i had earlier this week this particular phenomenon was both fun to be in (kinda like an amusement park ride!), scientifically explainable, and most importantly neither scary nor DEAD!
i'll keep you posted on what they find out about this weird quake.
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