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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 ...'"
I can go home a few microseconds early today.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
either way, it's anthropogenic.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
It means that no one had posted anything to the comments of the story yet. And if you are a /. regular it's really a secret troll code telling you to rush in to comment about frosty piss and checking the post anonymously button while praying to the FSM that you beat all the other cowards to it. ;)
I knew it! I blame the political party I'm not affiliated with.
If it was traveling at 400 miles per hour, 1.26 microseconds is 0.007 inches. I am assuming that is within detonation radius.
The reason the day length changes is because the quake caused a net motion of mass toward the center of the planet. This reduces the moment of inertia, and because of conservation of momentum, the planet's rotation must speed up.
If this happened repeatedly, it would mean that the density of the planet was increasing. That can't happen to any significant degree, because it would involve compression, which requires a source of energy (note -- I don't mean that the increased rotation is due to an energy input, just that it takes energy to compress a planet). Earthquakes just move energy around, they do not create it. So over long spans of time, earthquakes tend to increase the length of the day by about as much as they decrease it. It all depends on whether the net motion was toward the center of the earth or away from it.
This is based on my knowledge of physics, but I am not a geologist, so there may be complicating factors I don't know about. However, I'm pretty sure that the planet's density cannot increase arbitrarily.
Remember, this is only what a model predicts, unlike what the headline suggests.
Lemme guess: they used the Quake II engine?
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
A James Bond inch? How awesome!
Q. What do all ice ages have in common?
A. They never happened! That's what they have in common, they have all been concocted by scientists with an agenda to undermine scripture.
And for all those who think that this earthquake wasn't caused by Man ... well it was! Fornication, homosexuality, feminism, democracy, drug-taking, violent video games, on-line porn, science, charity, freedom of speech, blashpemy, etc. etc. all these evils will not go unpunished!
It's the fault of both the parties, you sheeple!
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
I wonder... Compare the total weight of the entire chinese population to the total weight of the entire population of the US. Who's heavier?
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
This is based on my knowledge of physics, but I am not a geologist, so there may be complicating factors I don't know about. However, I'm pretty sure that the planet's density cannot increase arbitrarily.
What goes up must come down...in geology, it's called istosasy. It's sort of like gravitational equilibrium. What sinks in one place is usually offset by a height increase elsewhere. Over years, the small geologic events (and yes, the Chile earthquake is small when measured in geologic units) balance themselves out. I would not worry too much about the lost microsecond. We'll gain it back next year.