On the 11th March 2011 the Tohoku earthquake struck off the north-eastern coast of the Japanese island of Honshu. An area of seafloor larger than Greater Tokyo moved eastwards by 5 metres and some parts of the fault moved by up to 50 metres. A total of nearly 19,000 people were killed, mainly as a result of the following tsunami. But the event came as a huge surprise to scientists the world over “This was a truly extraordinary earthquake and very unfortunately seismologists, including myself, did not expect this to happen,” said Japanese scientist Dr. Kiyoshi Suyehiro. Read more [...]