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On March 11, a powerful, 8.9-magnitude quake hit northeast Japan, triggering a tsunami with 10-meter-high waves that reached the U.S. West Coast.

At 2:46 P.M. Tokyo time, one of the largest earthquakes of the past century hit just off the coast of Honshu, the main island of Japan. The 8.9-magnitude quake stirred up massive tsunami waves that battered coastal cities, especially along the east coast north of Tokyo.

The National Ocanic and Atmospheric Administration released this video showing the spread of the tsunami generated by a magnitude 8.9 quake off Sendai, Japan, on March 11. [More]

The 8.9 magnitude earthquake in Japan is causing problems for at least one of its fleet of nuclear reactors--and authorities have shut down 10 of the country's 55 units.

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Editor's note (3/11/11): This article is from the forthcoming April issue of S cientific Aemrican . We are posting the text of the article early in light of the deadly Japan earthquake and resulting tsunami

The massive magnitude 8.9 earthquake that struck near the east coast of Honshu, Japan's main island, at 2:46 P.M. local time and unleashed a fierce tsunami claiming hundreds of lives is already being felt as far away as the west coast of North America, about 8,000 kilometers away. Much of this has to do with the depth of the ocean that the tsunamis waves traversed as well as the sheer size of the quake, which was the strongest recorded in Japan's history

Our partners at Nature have a correspondent in Japan.

(PhysOrg.com) -- David Mazziotti has significantly improved a quantum computational method that he introduced in 2004 for efficiently modeling the electrons in atoms and molecules.

This post is a slightly edited version of my December 29, 2004, post written in reaction to media reports about a "sixth sense" in animals, that supposedly allows them to avoid a tsunami by climbing to higher ground.

Will seismologists ever be able to reliably predict the exact location, time and magnitude of earthquakes like the one that just devastated Japan and sent tsunamis racing across the Pacific Ocean? If so, they might be able to save many lives.

Elephants are smart, social animals. And now we know that they can organize themselves into teams to accomplish tasks. A research team that included renowned primatologist Franz de Waal taught 12 Thai elephants--who already work with human trainers called mahouts--to get a bowl of food by pulling a rope attached to an out-of-reach table

Climate change will pose major new hurdles for U.S. naval forces, forcing the military to grapple with an emerging Arctic frontier, increasing demand for humanitarian aid and creating rising seas that could threaten low-lying bases, the National Academy of Sciences said yesterday. "Even the most moderate current trends in climate, if continued, will present new national security challenges for the the U.S.

Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking (The Cooking Lab, 2011) is a six-volume, 2,348-page work that relies heavily on photography and illustrations to make the science and technology of modern cooking accessible and engaging to everyone from science buffs to professional chefs. One of our goals in producing the book, by inventor and physicist Nathan Myhrvold, along with co-authors Chris Young and Maxime Bilet, was to give readers insight into what happens inside food as it cooks. So we developed a unique "cutaway" style of photo illustration that reveals all the action occurring at the center of, say, a pot of steaming broccoli or a pair of burgers on a Weber grill.

Dear EarthTalk : What specific issues and protections are covered by the Food Safety Modernization Act recently signed into law? --P.