EARTHQUAKES AND THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES The situation on the island of Rhodes in ancient times represented a privileged location in the Aegean Sea. From there, trade with Greece, Asia Minor and Egypt, as well as strategic control of the area, was much easier than from anywhere else in the Mediterranean. Therefore, different peoples, as the Macedonian, tried to gain control of the island. But it was able to repel the attacks and to honor it was decided to erect a giant statue of Helios, the patron deity of the place. The construction manager was Cares of Lindos and iron she used to build the frame and a large number of bronze plaques to give rise to a huge statue, measuring 32 meters high.
The fame of the sculpture, which will go down in history as
The Colossus of Rhodes, was growing every day and visitors from all over the known world moved to the island to contemplate. But fate would have it only 56 years after being put in place a large earthquake toppled. After that, the governor of Egypt Ptolemy III offered to pay for reconstruction of the structure, but officials of the island rejected the offer on the grounds that the earthquake was a punishment for offending the gods to the god Helios.
And is that for much of history, earthquakes, like all phenomena that different civilizations have known but have not come to understand, have been considered divine punishment for humanity. From that, in the third century BC to the present day, earthquakes have occurred continuously leaving behind a death toll and massive property damage. The human consequences of higher than it is reported was the great earthquake of the Middle East, which struck northern Egypt in 1201 claiming more than one million lives. Today, the knowledge we have about earthquakes allows us to approach them in a much more mundane, but still seems far off the day when we are able to predict with sufficient time.
To explain how and why earthquakes occur should start talking about a layer of earth called the lithosphere. This is a solid structure that floats above the other, fluid characteristics, called the asthenosphere. The lithosphere is divided into 14 fragments each called tectonic plates. These plates, because they are not solid on the field, moving slowly generating a series of processes such as volcanism, mountain building and seismic events.
The movement of tectonic plates occurs at a rate that is imperceptible in our day to day, two or three inches a year, "but enough to be generating Friction energy builds up until eventually released leading to the feared earthquakes. The actual area where the earthquake occurs, ie the site that releases great energy accumulated over a long period of friction between two tectonic plates is called the hypocenter, while at the same place, but in the earth's surface is called the epicenter, and this is where seismic waves are felt with greater intensity.
Whenever an earthquake is generated displayed various types of elastic waves that are propagated by the earthquake. These waves can be of three types: primary or P waves, which propagate in the same direction as the vibration, high or S, which propagate perpendicular to the vibration, and surface waves, which are the last to appear and they do as a result of the interaction between P and S waves in the Earth's surface. The latter are those that produce more damage to the structural level. Although it is true that the appearance of damage different factors such as depth of the hypocenter is and how ready it is a population to cope with the presence of the earthquake.
However, there is an objective scale, which is most often used to quantify the effect of an earthquake, called the Richter Scale. This determines the magnitude of an earthquake logarithmically. Ie the unit increase in the Richter scale, for instance, going from 7 to 8 degrees, "means that the quake's force has grown tenfold.
Today, there is a project to re-erect a statue in Rhodes similar to what existed then. Meanwhile, the fear that the earth tremble still present in our lives, although, as always, unfortunately often primed with the less fortunate. Pego
Can the "coexistence" between different cultures in the globalized world of the XXI century? 
or Cairo, a journey that seeks to strokes of dialogue and coexistence in which a mythical Jewish, Christian and Muslims have lived in mutual respect and tolerance. In this search we follow two geniuses medieval Maimonides and Averroes, both born in al-Andalus and Córdoba, each from their own faith, had the courage to try to harmonize religion and science, reason and revelation. 
onducido by Jacob Bender, American Jewish who, in addition to his experience as a filmmaker and director, has significant experience in the world as an activist for peace and interreligious dialogue. Throughout the documentary, Bender meets people from different communities and traditions that live in the midst of contradiction and conflict to reconcile their faith with modernity, democracy and tolerance. 
