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Japan Earthquake May Have Shifted Earth's Axis

Zothecula writes "Using a complex model to perform a theoretical calculation based on a US Geological Survey, Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has determined that by changing the distribution of the Earth's mass, the earthquake that devastated Japan last Friday should have sped up the Earth's rotation, resulting in a day that is about 1.8 microseconds (1.8 millionths of a second) shorter."

7 of 253 comments (clear)

  1. On the positive side... by Albert+Sandberg · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... the work day got about 0.6 microseconds shorter, woo! Oh, wait....

    1. Re:On the positive side... by Dachannien · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's coming out of your paycheck.

  2. Know your reader by lxs · · Score: 5, Funny

    Did I read that correctly? Did the summary explain to us what a microsecond is?

    1. Re:Know your reader by should_be_linear · · Score: 1, Funny

      Thats was translation of metric units for US readers. Otherwise they would think microsecond is 1/12 second.

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      839*929
  3. Re:It's a dupe! by travdaddy · · Score: 3, Funny

    That's OK, now we can repost all the comments from that story and get modded up!

    "People of Earth, at 18:00 GMT March 10 we all jump at the same time and regain our microsecond!"

    Hm, maybe I should have changed the date on that one.

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    Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
  4. Just when you think you're having a good day... by Drakkenmensch · · Score: 5, Funny

    Shift happens.

  5. Re:Good God, Slashdot needs to explain a microseco by gstoddart · · Score: 1, Funny

    Remember, you can sleep when you're dead.

    That's not 'sleeping', that's 'dead'.

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