Posted 03.01.2010 at 5:21 pm
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The 8.8 magnitude seismic shock that rocked Chile over the weekend likely also rocked the Earth’s axis, shifting the planet’s mass enough to shave 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second) from all Earthly days going forward, a NASA scientist says. But that’s nothing; the magnitude 9.1 Sumatran quake that spawned the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 subtracted a whopping 6.8 microseconds.
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aww man... that means i don't have time to run to china and back now every day.
does that mean we'll get snow in the tropics now? or on the way there....these little shifts add up.
Even though the Sumatran Quake was more violent than the one in Chile, Chile's earthquake shifted the Earth's figure axis more than the Sumatran did. The one in Chile shifted the Earth's axis by like 3 inches.