Listen to Japan’s massive quake

Ever wonder what the fourth-largest recorded earthquake since 1900 sounds like? The Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics (LAB) has posted the eerie sound online. The Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), a network of underground observatories more than a thousand meters below sea level, made the chilling recording as the quake struck.

According to Science Daily, the sounds of Japan's 9.0-magnitude quake "have been accelerated 16 times so that they can be audible to human ears." The red and yellow colors on the spectogram represent the most intense parts of the quake. You can also listen to the first and second aftershock on the LIDO site.

In the video above, the sounds of the quake play over the images of the tsunami's destruction.

A German geophysicist also created this nifty graphic that shows the seismic activity off the coast of Japan since March 9, the day a 7.2 quake occurred off the coast of Japan. The morning of March 11 shows the massive quake and its aftershocks, and then the seismic activity slowly subsides. But all in all, the region has suffered 428 earthquakes since March 9, even though many were too far or too small to be felt on land.

And here's one more video, via Gawker, that shows the extent of the destruction of the tsunami in coastal Miyako City.

(Screenshot of March 11 quake spectogram: LIDO web site.)