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Chilean Earthquake Shortened Earth's Day
ailnlv writes "Days on Earth just got shorter. The recent earthquake in Chile shifted the planet's axis by about 8 cm and shortened days by 1.26 microseconds 'The changes can be modeled, though they're difficult to detect physically given their small size. ... Some changes may be more obvious, and islands may have shifted. ... 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 ...'"
Does this affect GPS for a short time? I understand that the USAF (or whoever runs it) will correct the system, but how quickly does this occur? Would it affect a JDAM bomb in flight, for example?
You say this to make fun of the global warming debate, but theoretically it's not completely impossible that underground nuclear testing has something to do with the specifics of any earthquakes since the 1950s or so. Earthquakes are undoubtedly chaotic, and a series of megaton explosions underground might have shaken things a little and helped them get where they're going faster (temporarily).
Mind you, I'm not claiming that's necessarily the case either (or even probably the case). Just that, much like a decent conspiracy theory, it's not entirely nonsense or outside the realm of possibility. (I'd guess that overall seismicity remains the same overall but chaotic effects will change the locations of, say, half the aftershocks next century.)
USGS FAQ here.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
The question to ask yourself is - stationary in relation to what?
Wasn't there a famous quote to the effect that you could say the earth was the center of the universe, but it just makes calculations needlessly difficult?
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
In Chaos Theory, a small change to the inputs can cause large changes to the results.
However the changes are just as likelly to go in one direction as they are to go in the opposite direction: the butterfly effect is just as likelly to result in a typhoon instead of clear weather as it is to result in clear weather instead of a typhoon.
Also, small changes to inputs can cause small changes to the outputs or even no changes at all (that's why it's called Chaos Theory) - plenty of butterflies flutter-about with out creating typhoons ;)
If indeed the system that underpins earthquakes is chaotic, underground nuclear tests are just as likelly to have brought forward quakes as they are to have delayed quakes as they are not not have had much effect at all - in fact, they're likelly to have done all of them.