Calculated by the lab
- Unchanged Earth baseline quantities
🌊 Mega-tsunami
Launch schematic expanding wavefronts on an Earth baseline.
Spherical ocean-masked rings show travel, not bathymetry-aware propagation.
Building the laboratory: star, orbit, planet, atmosphere...
What actually happens
Tsunamis can cross deep oceans at hundreds of kilometers per hour while remaining low, then grow as they enter shallow coastal water. Their paths and arrival times depend strongly on ocean depth, seafloor shape, coastlines, and the source mechanism.
This scenario draws rings at great-circle distance from an Indian Ocean origin and hides them over the rendered land mask. The wall-clock teaching sequence runs independently of the Time speed and Play/Pause controls. The rings are still not a water simulation: they do not refract with depth, route around real basins, or amplify near a coast.
Because the lab has no bathymetry or shallow-water solver, the graphic cannot predict warning time, wave height, inundation, or which shores would be reached by a real event.
How the simulation unfolds
Each step is labeled so you can tell a calculated result from an explanatory visual or wider scientific context.
- Changed input
Start in the Indian Ocean
The visual wave effect uses an Earth baseline and a preset Indian Ocean source.
- Computed
Planet outputs stay unchanged
No water displacement or seafloor input enters the lab's physical calculations.
- Illustrated
Wavefront rings expand
Several great-circle bands spread across rendered ocean on a readable wall-clock sequence independent of the teaching clock's speed and pause controls, then disappear over the land mask.
- Scientific context
Depth controls real waves
Bathymetry, coast geometry, and the source determine speed, refraction, shoaling, and inundation.
What is computed, illustrated, and not modeled
Shown to explain the result
- Great-circle wavefront rings masked over rendered land
Outside this model
- Bathymetry and basin routing
- Coastal shoaling and inundation
- Wave height, energy, and hazard
Model scope: The rings are hidden over rendered land, but their wall-clock timing is explanatory and ignores ocean depth, basin routing, and shoaling. Do not use them for arrival times, heights, or hazards.