Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/11/ocean-waves-can-hurl-boulders.html
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No wonder Homer called Poseidon the “earth-shaker”.
Who did Homer call the “rump-shaker”?
Boom - posted twice in one week.
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I’ve seen house-sized boulders that move from year to year in steep western river systems. Some years a few inches, some years a few feet, depending on the seasonal rains.
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Man, smart people really do doubt themselves all the time. This question is the furthest from my mind. This study seems inherently super-rad.
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It makes me think of what I learned from tai-chi. apart from, say, chemical explosions, we tend to think of force as generated by just crude mechanical movement: a muscle is only so strong, and some advantage from leverage in the joints. Not to be a Lee fanboy, but just to cite a well-known example, Bruce Lee’s one-inch-punch could blow you across the room. He wasn’t generating force strictly by brawn, he was generating a wave from his toes through his body controlled to break as it reached his knuckles. Lee was also exceptionally strong, true, but the whole body working as a system doesn’t have to move nearly as much to generate more force than mere muscle power–that’s tai-chi in a nutshell.
These ocean waves have the momentum and weight of the entire ocean to draw on. Add a storm onto that and watch out!
[trivia @Mister44: that was a young Pharell Williams’ first beat. But he bit the horn sample from PE, tho.]
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I have no sense of what the Statue of Liberty weighs.
620 tons ~= 5 blue whales or locomotive engines, or 3 jumbo jets.
EDIT, per @anothernewbbaccount : or 75 London double-decker buses.
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That’s not even close to being the world’s biggest rock.
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Put this together with rising sea levels and it could become really exciting!
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The agreed International Standard is London double-decker buses. Please comply. Thanks.
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Future sports:
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I’m glad I’m not the only one waiting for 2020!!
You know, one doesn’t usually discuss a lady’s weight…
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Not a very useful reference, how many 747’s or blue whales is that?
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So what is that as far as buttloads go?
Buttload: “A ‘butt’ is a traditional unit of volume used for wines and other alcoholic beverages. A butt is generally defined to be two hogsheads, but the size of hogsheads varies according to the contents. In the United States a hogshead is typically 63 gallons and a butt is 126 gallons.”
Edit: And for lulz i take this moment to remind everyone of this petition
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I don’t know the weights but I saw a lot of huge boulders on the cliff tops on the Atlantic side of Inishmore, Ireland while hiking there. Considering that the cliffs are 100+ feet in places, seeing rocks the size of a VW that had been tossed there was damned impressive. I had a couple of locals describe the storms they get but it didn’t really sink in until I saw the evidence myself.
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never underestimate the power of something as seemingly simple as water
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