05/19/2017
We work with bacteria in some capacity every day here however the idea of associating them with tsunami control generally has not crossed our minds. But researchers at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology Kochi Institute have been looking for ways to mitigate the size of tsunamis and are indeed turning to bacteria.
The team behind this mitigation moonshot pictures a future in which bacterial secretions can be scaled and used to fill the gaps between tectonic plates. The idea is to minimize the size of the tectonic shifts in order to reduce the severity of potential earthquakes and consequent tsunamis. (By the way, if you aren’t familiar with the science behind tsunamis, you can check out this awesome TED Ed animated video explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx9vPv-T51I).
When researchers put a calcium carbonate-producing strain of bacteria, known as Sporosarcina ureae, in conditions similar to those experienced at fault lines, they found the bacteria were able to increase friction by nearly 10 percent. Getting meaningful quantities of these bacteria to plate boundaries remains a significant challenge, and there are environmental considerations to be made; however, the researchers’ results show that this moonshot is off to a promising start.
Meanwhile, we will keep doing what we do best - identifying bacteria and other microbes based on their DNA :)
View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-tsunamis-work-alex-gendler The immense swell of a tsunami can grow up to 100 feet, hitting speeds over 500 mp...
