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Is The Earth's Rotation Changing?
Roland Piquepaille writes "We all know about the current controversies associated with the ozone layer or the global warming phenomenon. Now, the NASA's Earth Science Enterprise (ESE) is warning us that atmospheric changes or El Niño events can affect the Earth's rotation. During El Niño years, for example, the rotation of the Earth may slow ever so slightly because of stronger winds, increasing the length of a day by a fraction of a millisecond. David A. Salstein, an atmospheric scientist from Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc., led a recent study about this possible effect. Salstein looked at meteorological and astronomical measurements from different sources and found they were in good agreement. Check this column for a synthesis. For technical explanations, images and animations, please read this NASA paper, Changes in the Earth's rotation are in the wind."
Oh no! Scientific experiments revealing the truth! The horror of having to deal with the consequences of spitting toxic shit at unnatural rates into the air for centuries! Let's burn their textbooks, lest they try to save the environment!
"I only speak the truth"
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Mod this guy down. He's passing bogus info (and I suspect he knows he's doing it.) Nobody who reads slashdot is so uneducated as to think the seasons are caused by the disatance the earth is from the sun. Nor that leapyear is related to inconsistencies in the 24 hour day. Our calendar contains a leap year because the time it takes the eath to complete one orbit around the sun isn't an integer number of days. He is posting bogus information and laughing at those who don't catch it (especially the idiots who modded him UP as "Informative"... come on people.)
Earth's rotation is also found to be affected by bad breaths created by the geeks of the North America. For example, during the dot-com boom, Earth's rotation was found to be slowed down by a fraction of a microsecond.
Apparently geeks from other parts of Earth did not contribute to the slowdown. Experts suggest that it might be related to the discrepancy of bad-breath/good-breath ratio among the populations.