14 DAY TRIAL // Two years ago, Japan was hit by an earthquake whose magnitude was one of 9.0. The quake caused severe damage and killed thousands of people.
Oddly enough, it appears that this major shake also affected people living in Norway.
Thus, Norwegians living close to the country's coastline recollect that, on the morning of March 11, 2011, at about 7 a.m. local time, the sea inexplicably began to oscillate.
They say it continued to do so for about 3 hours.
What's more, waves formed in Norway's fjords, and battered the shoreline, Live Science tells us. By the looks of it, some of these waves measured nearly 5 feet (1.5 meters) in height.
Granted, the waves were by no means big enough to cause any damage, yet they did spark quite a commotion.
Specialists first suspected that these waves had formed in the aftermath of an underwater landslide.
However, investigations carried out later on indicate that the waves came into being due to Japan's massive earthquake, the same source informs us.
Thus, specialists explain that the waves that hit Norway's shoreline back in March 2011 only formed in fjords pointing towards Japan.
They further detail that, according to their investigations, the peculiar phenomenon was caused by a type of seismic waves dubbed S-waves, which have previously been documented to trigger back and forth ground movements that are perpendicular to their direction of travel.
By the looks of it, the S-waves that reached Norway's northeast-pointing fjords caused the ground to slightly shake. More precisely, they fostered back and forth oscillations of about 0.4 inches (about 1 centimeter).
This might not seem like much but, as geologist Stein Bondevik puts it, “You can move a lot of water just by pushing one centimeter of ground.”
A paper detailing this theory is made available to the public in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letter.