• Chilean Quake Likely Shifted Earth’s Axis, NASA Scientist Says
    39 replies, posted
[QUOTE] March 1 (Bloomberg) -- The earthquake that killed more than 700 people in Chile on Feb. 27 probably shifted the Earth’s axis and shortened the day, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist said. Earthquakes can involve shifting hundreds of kilometers of rock by several meters, changing the distribution of mass on the planet. This affects the Earth’s rotation, said Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who uses a computer model to calculate the effects. “The length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second),” Gross, said today in an e-mailed reply to questions. “The axis about which the Earth’s mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches).” The changes can be modeled, though they’re difficult to physically detect given their small size, Gross said. Some changes may be more obvious, and islands may have shifted, according to Andreas Rietbrock, a professor of Earth Sciences at the U.K.’s Liverpool University who has studied the area impacted, though not since the latest temblor. Santa Maria Island off the coast near Concepcion, Chile’s second-largest city, may have been raised 2 meters (6 feet) as a result of the latest quake, Rietbrock said today in a telephone interview. He said the rocks there show evidence pointing to past earthquakes shifting the island upward in the past. ‘Ice-Skater Effect’ “It’s what we call the ice-skater effect,” David Kerridge, head of Earth hazards and systems at the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, said today in a telephone interview. “As the ice skater puts when she’s going around in a circle, and she pulls her arms in, she gets faster and faster. It’s the same idea with the Earth going around if you change the distribution of mass, the rotation rate changes.” Rietbrock said he hasn’t been able to get in touch with seismologists in Concepcion to discuss the quake, which registered 8.8 on the Richter scale. “What definitely the earthquake has done is made the Earth ring like a bell,” Rietbrock said. The magnitude 9.1 Sumatran in 2004 that generated an Indian Ocean tsunami shortened the day by 6.8 microseconds and shifted the axis by about 2.3 milliarcseconds, Gross said. The changes happen on the day and then carry on “forever,” Benjamin Fong Chao, dean of Earth Sciences of the National Central University in Taiwan, said in an e-mail. “This small contribution is buried in larger changes due to other causes, such as atmospheric mass moving around on Earth,” Chao said.[/QUOTE] Source: [url]http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-01/chilean-quake-likely-shifted-earth-s-axis-nasa-scientist-says.html[/url] :byodood:
I knew something was wrong when the sun set a little earlier today.
1 microsecond shorter days? lame I thought it was gonna be by like 30 minutes or something
If this makes winter last forever I say we go to war with Chile.
"Ice-Skater Effect"? Can't someone find something else to call it?
Yeah I definitely called this one when it got dark so early today
oh jeez oh jeez one less microsecond in the day fuck fuck fuck :downs: In all seriousness, I never actually knew that an earthquake could move the Earth's axis. Pretty weird.
[QUOTE=Glitch360;20504250]1 microsecond shorter days? lame I thought it was gonna be by like 30 minutes or something[/QUOTE] If something with enough force hit us to cause a tilting like that, we'd likely be in deep shit.
I thought this was something very serious, like some 2012 crap... but NOOOOO all it is is a 1 microsecond shorter day...
-snip- Damn you southern hemisphere! :argh:
1.26 microseconds can make the difference between getting skin cancer and not getting skin cancer that earthquake was a good thing after all!
Wow, that is incredible to be honest.
Incredible, but just watch this be the first event that sets off a string of events to cause the world to end in 2012. you heard it from me first, guys
doesn't this make our lives 1.26 microseconds shorter? DARN YOU EARTH
no it doesn't [editline]09:06PM[/editline] dummy
The sun set way later today than normal.
[QUOTE=mrcole92;20506021]Incredible, but just watch this be the first event that sets off a string of events to cause the world to end in 2012. you heard it from me first, guys[/QUOTE] *chaos and end of world going on here* "OH FUCK OH FUCK I KNEW THAT FACEPUNCH POSTER WAS RIGHT! WE SHOULD HAVE LISTENED!!11"
Welp. We're fucked.
[QUOTE=Gummylamb;20506027]doesn't this make our lives 1.26 microseconds shorter? DARN YOU EARTH[/QUOTE] ya bro but yuo frugot to multiply 1.26 by 365 and then by about 80 to get all the days to come. Its ok bro i rfeel yuor burn.
your year is around 37 minutes shorter
Guys there was a massive earthquake in Haiti. I hope they're alright. :ohdear:
[QUOTE=Late Man;20506378]Guys there was a massive earthquake in Haiti. I hope they're alright. :ohdear:[/QUOTE] Oh fuck when?
[QUOTE=Late Man;20506378]Guys there was a massive earthquake in Haiti. I hope they're alright. :ohdear:[/QUOTE] Who the fuck cares? The one in Chile just made the Atomic Clock wrong!
Oh god dammit. :suicide:
[QUOTE=Smoot;20506519]Oh fuck when?[/QUOTE] Just yesterday, it's terrible. [editline]10:42PM[/editline] [QUOTE=ASmellyOgre;20506537]Who the fuck cares? The one in Chile just made the Atomic Clock wrong![/QUOTE] Which one? There hasn't been a quake in Chile for a long while, at least not a major one.
Are we going to collide into the Sun quicker now?
So [i]this[/i] is why my PlayStation 3 thinks its 1999.
Oh great that's 1.26 milliseconds less time to sleep and study for these shitty standardized tests. Fuck you earth.
omg its 2012 fuck were all gonna be poor
Oh that's new, Chile only thinking of [I]themselves[/I]. Selfish bastards. They just [I]had[/I] to have that earthqauke, look what you did!
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