ESA shows shaken Japan

As the Pacific plate moved westwards and pushed itself underneath the North American plate, on which Japan is partially situated, strain energy built up in the crust. At the same time, Japan was being crushed, making it ever slimmer. When the strain energy was released, during the earthquake on the 11th of March, Japan rebounded. The east coast of the main island of Honshu subsided up to a meter, while the entire island expanded by four meters and also moved several centimeters eastwards.

Professor Ramon Hanssen has a picture from ESA on his desk on which brightly colored circles show how Japan changed shape. “Based on the motions observed in Japan until now, we expect that most of the energy in the crust has probably been discharged,” the earth observer says.

But to date only the rough contours have been sketched, as based primarily on satellite radar data. In order to model the tensions left in the earth’s crust along the boundary between the tectonic plates, the radar data must be analyzed more accurately and combined with GPS and seismic data. 

Even better would be to add another information source to the data set: the tsunami. The researchers however do not have radar images from the ocean floor nor GPs stations on the bottom of the sea. To gain greater insights into the uplift of the ocean floor, Prof. Hanssen, geophysicist Dr Andy Hooper, and researchers from the Astrodynamics & Space Missions group teamed up with hydraulic engineers from the faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, who are presently modeling the tsunami. The team of hydraulic engineers – which includes tsunami expert, Dr Julie Pietrzak – use data obtained from buoys in the Pacific Ocean. “We can use our model to verify if the models of the earth are correct,” Dr Pietrzak comments.

On Friday, Dr Hooper will present the Delft strategy in Vienna, during the annual meeting of the European Geophysical Union.

“No other sport has the ability to arouse such indescribable passions and excitement as the beautiful game of football, and such passions will be reignited again this summer when the World Cup kicks off in South Africa, bringing the world’s great footballing nations together again. In Delft, football has also brought together people from many different nations, but not as opponents, but rather as teammates, teammates whose efforts on and off the football pitch recently earned us a glorious place in Ariston’s history books as ‘Champions of KNVB Class 6 J’.
Indeed, the players in the 7th team of Ariston ’80, TU Delft’s student football club, came from nations from across the globe, from Iran, Nigeria, Chile, Indonesia and Italy, France, Iceland, Sweden and Mexico, all proudly joining their Dutch teammates in donning Ariston’s famed rood en blauw jersey. At first glance this may seem like a shining example of TU Delft’s successful internationalization drive, but in truth our team’s success came from hard work, from two years of learning the lessons of life from different cultures. There were times when anxiety and despair got the better of us, yet a pillar of hope, a determination and belief in ourselves, kept us going. And so our disappointments became accomplishments, our struggles triumphs: Champions of KNVB Class 6 J!
By any measure this is an impressive feat for a ‘student’ team assembled by chance and circumstance, playing in a Dutch amateur league against opponents from established clubs who, unlike us, often grew up playing together at their clubs. In contrast, our team of global citizens, had to quickly make the best out of our very different playing styles, attitudes and approaches to the game.
Despite of our differences of race, religion and creed, we played together as one. So what were the secrets of our team’s success? And how is our team’s success analogous to the success of the university’s wider internationalization process?
First, as solid as the grassy ground we played on, was our immediate respect for one another, a tolerance for one another’s differences and ‘foreignness’, from which friendships both on and off the field were cultivated. Off the field of play, our many team bonding sessions – dinners and social night outs – helped establish the ideals of trust, friendship and mutual respect among us, which eventually translated into resounding success on the football pitch.
This is how you build a united team, this is how you build a united, truly integrated university. You compete, play, laugh and struggle together. You literally and figuratively sit at the same table, shoulder to shoulder, learning from and rejoicing in each other’s differences.
Our experience, the remarkable success of our randomly assembled team of internationals brought together by the common bond of football, not only serves as a lesson for the university and its internationalization process, but also as a lesson for world football and its legions of supporters, which is all too often plagued by racism and xenophobia.
As the countdown to the South African fiesta continues, the boys of Ariston 7 will be the first among many to join the world in sounding the vuvuleza (trumpets) and heeding the Zulu calls to unite and celebrate ibhola lethu (the spirit of football).

Bemgba Nyakuma, from Nigeria, is a second-year MSc student at the Faculty of Applied Sciences. He can be contacted at: b.b.nyakuma@student.tudelft.nl