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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."
... the work day got about 0.6 microseconds shorter, woo! Oh, wait....
Did I read that correctly? Did the summary explain to us what a microsecond is?
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.
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
Shift happens.
Everytime I heard that the Earth's axis had been changed during the Chile earthquake, I figured it was the rotation axis. I thought it was a little far-fetched, but I wasn't one to argue with the data. However, it is NOT the rotational axis that was shifted and this article finally clarifies that. I read many others before (probably regurgitations of the real scientific paper) and they never said that.
Apparently, the axis that shifted is that of mass, called the Figure Axis, meaning the axis of symmetry in the Earth's mass distribution. We're still rotating in the same direction (defined by an axis which is not the Figure one), though.
Eh, it's just God setting us up for 2012. Just needed to tweek the axis a bit before he could start destroying us all. It's like tuning a set of rabbit ears on an old television.
It won't add up to a whole second for about 1711.2 years.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Now i will live more miliseconds.
not too smart this one, kinda like what's heavier a pound of feathers or a pound of bricks.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Many of the comments on here are "1.8 microseconds, oh no I get less sleep! What a stupid finding."
But seriously, does this have an effect on GPS? GPS satellites need to be corrected for relativistic effects that cause their clocks to tick 38 microseconds/day different than the ground; which would cause error to accumulate at 10km/day. Does 1.8 microsecond difference in our day cause error to accumulate in GPS at the rate of 0.5km/day if not fixed?
So what? Some of us prefer to be ahead of time.
Newton still right!
Basic principles of mechanics remain sound!
Film at eleven.
The speed of the Earth's rotation changes every time I ride an elevator, too. (Please resist the temptation to make a fat joke here; it's too obvious to be worth the trouble.) On a more impressive scale, there's a significant and variable amount of angular momentum stored in the atmosphere. Changes in major air currents year over year (things like El Nino, for instance) can change the length of the day by close to a millisecond: hundreds of times more than this little earthquake.
~Idarubicin
BTW: GPS satellites are NOT in geo-synchronous orbit.
Isn't a second defined to be 1/60th of a minute which is 1/60th of an hour, which is 1/24th of a day? And a day is the amount of time it takes for the sun to revolve around the earth. For this reason, it won't add up at all since this change will have redefined what a second is.
- queue sound of crickets chirping -
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
One day, some day, the US elementary education system will move to the metric system. But as long as parents expect teachers to teach what they know and use, it will never happen.
Never! You can have my feet when you pry them from my cold, dead legs!