Pacific volcano erupts near Marianas islands

SAIPAN, Northern Marianas A volcanic eruption near the Pacific’s Northern Mariana Islands shot clouds of ash and vapor nearly eight miles into the sky, federal scientists said.The eruption occurred early Saturday and appeared to come from an underwater volcano off Sarigan, a sparsely inhabited island about 100 miles north of the U.S. commonwealth’s main island of Saipan.The Northern Marianas are about 3,800 miles southwest of Hawaii.

USGS volcanologist Game McGimsey said Sunday that scientists are still trying to pinpoint the source but evidence is pointing to an underwater mountain.”People on the island (Sarigan) heard a loud explosion and almost immediately there was a heavy ash fall which turned to a light fall fairly quickly,” McGimsey told The Associated Press. He said there was no ash in Saipan or Guam.The eruption was fairly brief and no other volcanic clouds have been detected, said McGimsey, who is based in Anchorage, Alaska. Scientists don’t know if the undersea activity is continuing.

Satellite images showed the cloud reaching to 40,000 feet. But the USGS said it was largely water vapor and strong winds were dispersing it.McGimsey said researchers flew over the area Sunday and spotted discolored water presumably over the volcanic vent, estimated at 1,000 feet beneath sea level.(AP)

Astronomers find loads of water-ice on big asteroid

A slushy cocktail of water-ice and organic materials has been directly detected on the surface of an asteroid for the first time. The finding strengthens the theory that asteroids delivered the ingredients for Earth’s oceans and life, and could make astronomers rethink conventional models for how the Solar System evolved.

It has long been thought that asteroids, which lie in a belt between Mars and Jupiter, are rocky bodies that sit too close to the Sun to retain ice. By contrast, comets, which form further out beyond Neptune, are ice-rich bodies that develop distinctive tails of vaporized gas and dust when they approach the Sun. However, this distinction was blurred in 2006 by the discovery of small objects with comet-like tails in the asteroid belt1, says astronomer Andrew Rivkin of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.To investigate the composition of these ‘main-belt comets’, Rivkin and his colleague Joshua Emery, of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, turned the infra-red telescope at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, onto the asteroid 24 Themis — the parent body from which two of the smaller comet-like asteroids observed in 2006 were chipped. Emery and Rivkin took seven measurements of 24 Themis over a period of six years, each time looking at a different face of the asteroid as it travelled around its orbit. They consistently found a band in the absorption spectrum of light reflected from its surface that indicated the presence of grains coated in water ice, as well as the signature of carbon-to-hydrogen chemical bonds — as found in organic materials. Rivkin and Emery’s work is published in this week’s Nature2.

“Astronomers have looked at dozens of asteroids with this technique, but this is the first time we’ve seen ice on the surface and organics,” says Rivkin. The result was independently confirmed by a team led by Humberto Campins at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He and his colleagues observed 24 Themis for 7 hours one night, as it almost fully rotated on its axis. “Between us, we have seen the asteroid from almost every angle and we see global coverage,” says Campins. He and his team also publish their findings in this week’s Nature3.

Julie Castillo-Rogez, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, describes the findings as “huge”. “This answers the long-term question of whether there is free water in the asteroid belt,” she says.
Icy interloper

Because 24 Themis lies only about 479 million kilometres from the Sun (roughly three times the mean distance from Earth to the Sun), it is surprising that the surface ice has not all been vaporized. Both teams speculate that more ice may be held in a reservoir beneath the asteroid’s surface, shielded from the Sun, and that this ice is slowly churned up as the asteroid is struck by small bodies in the belt, thus replenishing the surface ice.The findings lend weight to the idea that asteroids and comets are the source of Earth’s water and organic material. Geochemists think that the early Earth went through a molten phase when any organic molecules would have dissociated, so new organic material would have had to be delivered to the planet at a later time, says Campins. “I believe our findings are linked to the origin of life on Earth,” he says.To assess the plausibility of this scenario, astronomers must determine whether the make-up of 24 Themis is typical of other asteroids and, if so, what exactly they hold, says Castillo-Rogez. A priority should be to search for water ice on near-Earth asteroids that could be targeted by NASA’s planned robotic and manned missions. “If we find ice samples that contain the same ratio of deuterium [‘heavy hydrogen’ made up of one neutron and one proton] to hydrogen as seen on Earth, that would be a strong pointer,” she says.

However, 24 Themis may not be a typical member of the belt it could be an interloper that formed beyond Neptune, along with the comets, which was later knocked inwards, says Rivkin. If so, this would fit well with the controversial ‘Nice model’ of the evolution of the Solar System. Proposed in 2005, this model suggests that the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and asteroids migrated to their present orbits after formation4. Either way, says Rivkin, “The old-fashioned picture of the Solar System in which asteroids are asteroids and comets are comets is getting harder to sustain.”(nature)

5.9-magnitude earthquake hit near the Pacific island of Tonga on Thursday

WELLINGTON, New Zealand A 5.9-magnitude earthquake hit near the Pacific island of Tonga on Thursday, but no casualties or damage were reported and no tsunami warning was issued.The quake struck 65 miles (135 kilometers) northeast of Hihifo, Tonga, at a depth of 21 miles (35 kilometers).Many residents of American Samoa felt the quake and went out to look at the ocean while listening to radio broadcasts.

“Nothing is registered on our censors for tsunami waves,” according to Carol Baqui, a forecaster with the American Samoa weather service.No tsunami warning was issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii.

Police in the Samoan capital, Apia, said they had no reports on the temblor. “We didn’t feel any earthquake,” an officer, who declined to be named, said.Julie Dutton, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado, it was a relatively small quake.”Right now we don’t have any reports of it being felt. It’s pretty far off the coast so we’re not anticipating anything damaging,” Dutton said.Preliminary estimates put the quake at 6.2, but that was later downgraded to 5.9.

A magnitude 8.0 earthquake close to neighboring Samoa last Sept. 29 killed 34 people in American Samoa, 183 in Samoa and nine in Tonga, when tsunami waves up to 46 feet (14 meters) high crashed ashore. It also created a sea floor fault up to 190 miles (300 kilometers) long and 23 feet (7 meters) deep.About 90 percent of the world’s temblors occur in the so-called “Ring of Fire” – an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones that stretches around the Pacific Rim.(AP)

Is there anything you'd like to know about tsunamis?

SEASIDE, Ore. Amid the hundreds of people who walked up and down the promenade overlooking the Oregon coast at Seaside on Saturday was one man on a mission.”Is there anything you’d like to know about tsunamis?” Patrick Corcoran said as he approached passersby toting shopping bags or walking their dogs.In many cases, the answer was yes. Thus began a series of impromptu lectures on big waves, subduction zones and the real tsunami danger in the Pacific Northwest: not far-off quakes, but close-up ones.”These distant-event tsunamis are really nothing, and we tend to overemphasize them,” Corcoran said. “If people come away from this thinking tsunamis on the Oregon coast mean licking ice cream cones and strolling on the promenade here, that’s a terrible mistake.”Corcoran is an education and outreach specialist with Oregon State University’s Oregon Sea Grant program. He works with coastal communities on tsunami preparation.

With the media attention from Saturday’s massive earthquake in Chile and the tsunami that it spawned sure to attract gawkers to the coast, Corcoran figured it would be a “teachable moment.”The National Weather Service issued an advisory that covered the West Coast indicating a tsunami capable of producing strong currents or waves was expected. It was canceled by early evening, and amid typical swells of around 8 feet and a falling tide on Saturday afternoon, few effects from the tsunami were visible in Seaside or elsewhere in the Northwest.The western edge of the Cascadia subduction zone lies just off the Pacific Coast and runs from Mendocino, Calif., all the way up to Vancouver Island. The last major quake off the coast was 310 years ago, Corcoran said. They come every 330 years on average.Such a quake could easily send a 60- to 90-foot wall of water onto shore within half an hour, he said.

There was no danger of that on Saturday, but police and Coast Guard helicopters shooed people off the beach repeatedly. As soon as they were gone everyone went back on the sand, Corcoran said.He urged people to learn the difference between the distant tsunamis and the close-up ones – “We’re going to be Chile, not Hawaii,” he said – and plan in advance a spot on high ground to meet with loved ones if a big wave does come.”When the earth shakes it’s too late to be looking for your map,” he said

JAPAN was warned of the possibility of 10ft waves early today as a tsunami swept across the Pacific after the huge earthquake that struck Chile early yesterday

JAPAN was warned of the possibility of 10ft waves early today as a tsunami swept across the Pacific after the huge earthquake that struck Chile early yesterday. The first 12ft tsunami waves generated by the earthquake hit French Polynesia and the Chatham Islands in New Zealand. On an island off Chile the high waves swamped a village with five people dying and 11 missing but elsewhere there were no reports of damage though authorities warned that higher tides could come later. Waves of up to 6ft hit Hawaii at about midday local time, washing over a low-lying park near the city of Hilo.In Chile itself, hours after the pulverising shock of the magnitude 8.8 earthquake, rippled across the southern Andes, ministers in Santiago, the Chilean capital, said they did not expect the toll to rise much above the official toll of 214.

It seemed that a combination of strict building regulations in Chile and tsunami alarms throughout much of the region had averted what President Michelle Bachelet had initially called a “catastrophe”. The worst damage was inflicted on Concepcion, Chile’s second-largest city and the closest to the quake’s epicentre 70 miles out to sea. First reports described screams and cries from the ruins of a 15-storey building.

Alejandra Gouet, a television reporter in Concepcion, said: “There isn’t a street without damage.” Other reports spoke of buildings on fire across the city. The death toll, however, rose more slowly than had been expected at the outset. In the capital of Santiago, 200 miles from the epicentre, Bachelet warned that “we undoubtedly can’t rule out more deaths and injuries” but emphasised: “The system is functioning.” Huge waves pounded Chile’s Juan Fernandez archipelago, which includes the island where Alexander Selkirk, the Scottish sailor, was marooned in the 18th century, inspiring the novel Robinson Crusoe. Chile’s Easter Island, a world heritage site famed for its monumental Polynesian statues, was among the areas deemed most at risk. Tsunami warnings were issued to at least 59 nations and Pacific territories.

Charles McCreery, director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre, said waves reaching Hawaii could be the largest to hit the islands since 1964. People had left the coast and petrol stations were jammed. On Tahiti traffic was banned from going within 500 yards of the sea. Central Chile was severely affected by the earthquake, which struck at 3.34am and was followed by violent aftershocks. Much of the country lost power, water supplies and communications. It was one of the most powerful tremors recorded in a region plagued for centuries by seismic upheaval. Concepcion was destroyed by earthquakes or tsunamis five times between 1570 and 1751, when the city was moved to a different location on the Bio-Bio river. It was destroyed again in 1835.

Charlotte Mountford, a Briton living in Santiago, said the tremor lasted about 30 seconds. “We crouched in bathtub on 14th floor while things smashed around us,” she wrote on the Twitter networking site. “Was terrifying.” John Grace, a British mining consultant, 54, said: “I have lived in Santiago 15 years and never felt anything like this earthquake before. It was by far the worst. I have a TV attached to the wall in my bedroom and it just collapsed.”

Claire Cunningham, 29, an IT consultant from Bromley, south London, added: “I am in Santiago on holiday with my husband, Tom. Our hotel room just rattled and rattled for a good minute. I thought the ceiling was about to cave in. It was horrifying. “We went down to the street and discovered that a TV mast had collapsed. There was concrete everywhere. If I had been under that at the time, I am sure I would have been killed.” The earthquake damaged 1.5m houses in Chile, one third of them seriously. Cars overturned, roads were split by fissures and the country suffered more than 100 aftershocks many of them stronger than five on the Richter scale.

On May 22, 1960, southern Chile was hit by the most powerful earthquake recorded, at a magnitude of 9.5. At least 1,600 people died. As a result, almost every large building constructed in Chile can withstand tremors. Yesterday’s earthquake was much more powerful than the 7.0 tremor that killed an estimated 230,000 people in Haiti in January, but the wealth Chile derives from being the world’s third-largest copper producer proved a significant barrier against mass destruction. “Chile is not Haiti,” noted one reporter. “The building codes are quite strict.”

Chile Quake Victims Increase So 78 People

Santiago, The death toll from an earthquake measuring 8.8 Richter scale in Chile is expected to continue to grow. According to a statement issued last Chilean President Michele Bachelet, a victim through the numbers at least 78 people. earthquake that occurred at 3:34 local time or 13:34 pm at the knock down buildings and cracked roads. Reported similar large tsunami waves hit the region in the Robinson Crusoe Islands, 660 kilometers from the coast of Chile.Previously had issued a tsunami warning for regions of South America, Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Philippines, Russia, and several islands in the Pacific.Severe damage to President Bachelet declared a state of disaster in Chile. Still, he called on citizens not to panic and avoid travel due to dark conditions following turn off the  electricity.

The massive earthquake that struck near the coast of central Chile has prompted the National Weather Service to issue a tsunami advisory for Southern and Central California. People are being told to avoid local beaches.Forecasters said widespread inundation is not expected, and officials don’t believe there is a major threat of damage.The NWS urged residents to stay away from the ocean waters though the early afternoon as a precaution, though forecasters stressed they don’t expect any damage. “Wave fluctuation” of 2 feet or less is possible at Santa Monica Pier around 12:25 p.m.
“The Coast Guard strongly encourages waterfront users to take extra precautions in preparation for the possibility of a surge, to include securing vessel mooring arrangements and possible sources of pollution,” according to a U.S. Geological Survey. statement.

The advisory was issued following an 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck about 200 miles southwest of Santiago, Chile according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Here is the advisory from NWS:

A MINOR TSUNAMI MAY BE RECORDED IN SOME AREAS OF THE COAST WHICH COULD PRODUCE DANGEROUS CURRENTS AND SURGES IN HARBORS AND BAYS.

PEOPLE ARE ADVISED TO STAY AWAY FROM THE BEACHES AND MARINAS. WAVE HEIGHTS AND CURRENTS ARE AMPLIFIED BY IRREGULAR SHORELINES AND ARE DIFFICULT TO PREDICT.

MINOR WAVE FLUCTUATIONS TWO FEET OR LESS ARE EXPECTED TO BEGIN WITHIN 30 MINUTES OF THE ESTIMATED ARRIVAL TIMES LISTED BELOW: PORT SAN LUIS HARBOR…AT 1235 PM PST. SANTA BARBARA HARBOR…AT 1231 PM PST. SANTA MONICA HARBOR….AT 1225 PM PST. SAN PEDRO HARBOR…….AT 1215 PM PST.

THESE MINOR WAVE FLUCTUATIONS COULD CONTINUE FOR SEVERAL HOURS. THE INITIAL WAVE MAY NOT BE THE LARGEST. MARINERS IN WATER DEEPER THAN 600 FEET SHOULD NOT BE AFFECTED BY THE TSUNAMI.

WASHINGTON A tsunami was generated on Saturday that could cause damage along the coasts of all the Hawaiian islands

WASHINGTON A tsunami was generated on Saturday that could cause damage along the coasts of all the Hawaiian islands, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said. “Urgent action should be taken to protect lives and property,” the center said in a bulletin. “All shores are at risk no matter which direction they face.”Earlier, the center had issued a Pacific-wide tsunami warning that included Hawaii and stretched across the ocean from South America to the Pacific Rim.The warnings followed a massive earthquake in Chile that killed at least 76 people and triggered tsunamis up and down the coast of the earthquake-prone country.The center estimated the first tsunami wave would hit Hawaii at 11:19 a.m. Hawaii time (4 a.m. EST). Waves up to 16 feet could hit the coast, center officials said.”A tsunami is a series of long ocean waves. A wave crest can last 5 to 15 minutes or more and extensively flood coastal areas,” the center said.(Reuters)

Asia and Australia braced for a tsunami after a devastating earthquake hit the coast of Chile on Saturday

TOKYO Wide swaths of the south Pacific, Asia and Australia braced for a tsunami after a devastating earthquake hit the coast of Chile on Saturday.Officials in Japan and Australia warned a tsunami from the earthquake was likely to hit Asian shorelines within 24 hours. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii issued a tsunami caution for areas across the region.”Sea-level readings confirm that a tsunami has been generated which could cause widespread damage,” the center said in a bulletin after the magnitude-8.8 quake. “Authorities should take appropriate action to respond to this threat.”

The center noted that the first waves after a quake are not necessarily the largest and said tsunami wave heights are difficult to predict because they can vary significantly along a coast due to the local topography.Earthquakes across the Pacific have had deadly effects on Asia in the past.A tsunami after a magnitude-9.5 quake that struck Chile in 1960, the largest earthquake ever recorded, killed about 140 people in Japan, 61 in Hawaii and 32 in the Philippines. That tsunami was about 3.3 to 13 feet (one to four meters) in height, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said.The tsunami from Saturday’s quake was likely to be much smaller because the quake itself was not as strong.

Japanese public broadcaster NHK quoted earthquake experts as saying the tsunami would likely be tens of centimeters (inches) high and reach Japan in about 22 hours. A tsunami of 28 centimeters (11 inches) was recorded after a magnitude-8.4 earthquake near Chile in 2001.The Meteorological Agency said it was still investigating the likelihood of a tsunami from the magnitude-8.8 quake and did not issue a formal coastal warning.Australia, meanwhile, was put on a tsunami watch.

The Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Center issued a warning for a “potential tsunami threat” to New South Wales state, Queensland state, Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island. Any potential wave would not hit Australia until Sunday morning local time, it said.The Bureau of Meteorology said a tsunami had already been observed off the coast of Chile that may threaten Australia.The earthquake struck early Saturday in central Chile, shaking the capital for a minute and a half.The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a warning for a swath of territories across the Asia-Pacific, also including New Zealand, Samoa, American Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan. (AP)

earthquake on the coast of Chile has killed at least 52 people

A massive earthquake on the coast of Chile has killed at least 52 people, flattening buildings and triggering a tsunami. The 8.8-magnitude quake, the country’s largest in 25 years, shook the capital Santiago for a minute and half at 3:34am (0634 GMT) today. A tsunami warning has been extended across the Pacific rim, including most of Central and South America and as far as Australia and Antarctica. The wave has already caused serious damage to the sparsely populated Juan Fernandez islands, off the Santiago coast, local radio reported.

Carmen Fernandez, the head of Chile’s emergency services, said at least 52 people died. President Michelle Bachelet has declared a “state of catastrophe” in the country. The quake hit near the town of Maule, 200 miles southwest of Santiago, at a depth of 22 miles underground. The epicentre was just 70 miles from Concepcion, Chile’s second-largest city, where more than 200,000 people live along the Bio Bio river. In Santiago buildings collapsed and phone lines and electricity were brought down, but the full extent of the damage is still being determined.

Santiago resident Simon Shalders said: “There was a lot of movement. The houses were really shaking, walls were moving backwards and forwards, and doors were swinging open. “The power is still out here. There’s quite a few choppers flying around in Santiago I suppose checking out the worst-affected areas.” In the coastal city of Vina del Mar, the earthquake struck just as people were leaving a disco, Julio Alvarez told a local radio station. “It was very bad, people were screaming, some people were running, others appeared paralyzed. I was one of them.”

Several big aftershocks later hit the south-central region, including ones measuring 6.9, 6.2 and 5.6. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a warning for Chile and Peru, and a less-urgent tsunami watch for Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and Antarctica. A spokesman said: “Sea level readings indicate a tsunami was generated. “It may have been destructive along coasts near the earthquake epicentre and could also be a threat to more distant coasts.”

The Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Center issued also warned of a “potential tsunami threat; to New South Wales state, Queensland state, Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island”. Any potential wave would not hit Australia until Sunday morning local time, it added. Earthquakes are relatively common in Chile, which is part of the pacific “ring-of-fire” tectonic-plate boundary, and many buildings are built to withstand tremors. The largest earthquake ever recorded struck the same region on May 22, 1960. The magnitude-9.5 quake killed 1,655 people and left two million homeless. The tsunami that it caused killed people in Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines and caused damage to the US West Coast.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano concedes airline security system failed

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

WASHINGTON Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano conceded Monday that the aviation security system failed when a young man on a watchlist with a U.S. visa in his pocket and a powerful explosive hidden on his body was allowed to board a fight from Amsterdam to Detroit.The Obama administration has ordered investigations into the two areas of aviation security – how travelers are placed on watch lists and how passengers are screened – as critics questioned how the 23-year-old Nigerian man charged in the airliner attack was allowed to board the Dec. 25 flight.A day after saying the system worked, Napolitano backtracked, saying her words had been taken out of context.”Our system did not work in this instance,” she said on NBC’s “Today” show. “No one is happy or satisfied with that. An extensive review is under way.”The White House press office, traveling with President Barack Obama in Hawaii, said early Monday that the president would make a statement from the Kaneoho Marine Base in the morning. White House spokesman Bill Burton did not elaborate.Billions of dollars have been spent on aviation security since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when commercial airliners were hijacked and used as weapons. Much of that money has gone toward training and equipment that some security experts say could have detected the explosive device that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is accused of hiding on his body on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.On Sunday, Napolitano said, “One thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked.” On Monday, she said she was referring to the system of notifying other flights as well as law enforcement on the ground about the incident soon after it happened.

The top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee took issue with Napolitano’s initial assessment.Airport security “failed in every respect,” Rep. Peter King of New York said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “It’s not reassuring when the secretary of Homeland Security says the system worked.”Investigators are piecing together Abdulmutallab’s brazen attempt to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Dec. 25. Law enforcement officials say he tucked below his waist a small bag holding his potentially deadly concoction of liquid and powder explosive material.

Harold Demuren, the head of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, says Abdulmutallab’s ticket came from a KLM office in Accra, Ghana. Demuren said Monday that Abdulmutallab bought the $2,831 round-trip ticket from Lagos, Nigeria, to Detroit via Amsterdam on Dec. 16.

Demuren declined to comment about Abdulmutallab’s travels in the days before he boarded his Dec. 24 flight from Lagos to Detroit via Amsterdam, saying FBI agents and Nigerian officials view the information as “sensitive.” He says Abdulmutallab checked into his flight with only a small carryon bag.Abdulmutallab had been placed in a U.S. database of people suspected of terrorist ties in November, but there was not enough information about his activity that would place him on a watch list that could have kept him from flying.

However, British officials placed Abdulmutallab’s name on a U.K. watch list after he was refused a student visa in May.Home Secretary Alan Johnson added that police and security services are looking at whether Abdulmutallab was radicalized in Britain.

Abdulmutallab received a degree in engineering and business finance from University College London last year and later applied to re-enter Britain to study at another institution. Johnson said Monday he was refused entry because officials suspected the school was not genuine and they then put his name on the list.

Johnson says that people on the list can transit through the U.K. but cannot enter the country.Officials said he came to the attention of U.S. intelligence last month when his father, Alhaji Umar Mutallab, a prominent Nigerian banker, reported to the American Embassy in Nigeria about his son’s increasingly extremist religious views. In a statement released Monday morning, Abdulmutallab’s family in Nigeria said that after his “disappearance and stoppage of communications while schooling abroad,” his father reached out to Nigerian security agencies two months ago. The statement says the father then approached foreign security agencies for “their assistance to find and return him home.”

The family says: “It was while we were waiting for the outcome of their investigation that we arose to the shocking news of that day.”

The statement did not offer any specifics on where Abdulmutallab had been.

Abdulmutallab’s success in smuggling and partially igniting the material on Friday’s flight prompted the Obama administration to promise a sweeping review of aviation security, even as the Homeland Security secretary defended the current system.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the government will investigate its systems for placing suspicious travelers on watch lists and for detecting explosives before passengers board flights.

Both lines of defense were breached in an improbable series of events Christmas Day that spanned three continents and culminated in a struggle and fire aboard a Northwest jet shortly before its safe landing in Detroit. Law enforcement officials believed the suspect tried to ignite a two-part concoction of the high explosive PETN and possibly a glycol-based liquid explosive, setting off popping, smoke and some fire but no deadly detonation.

An apparent malfunction in a device designed to detonate the PETN may have been all that saved the 278 passengers and the crew aboard Northwest Flight 253. No undercover air marshal was on board and passengers and crew subdued the suspect when he tried to set off the explosion. He succeeded only in starting a fire on himself.

Security experts said airport “puffer” machines that blow air on a passenger to collect and analyze residues would probably have detected the powder, as would bomb-sniffing dogs or a hands-on search using a swab. Most passengers in airports only go through magnetometers, which detect metal rather than explosives.

Abdulmutallab was treated for burns and was released Sunday to a prison 50 miles outside of Detroit.

Stiffer boarding measures have met passengers at gates since Friday and authorities warned travelers to expect extra delays returning home from holidays.

Adding to the airborne jitters, authorities detained a man, also from Nigeria, who locked himself in the bathroom on Sunday’s Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam as it was about to land in Detroit. Investigators concluded he posed no threat. Despite the government’s decision after the attempted Friday attack to mobilize more air marshals, none was on the Sunday flight from Amsterdam.