New Mexico Is Stretching, GPS Reveals

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @01:45PM from the too-many-tacos dept.

Velcroman1 writes "New Mexico's borders are gradually gaining girth, according to the Albuquerque Journal. It's not much, and it's not happening very fast — the state is getting about an inch wider every 40 years — but the state is unquestionably expanding, according to University of Colorado geophysicist Henry Berglund and his colleagues. Using a collection of 25 extra-precise GPS receivers planted across New Mexico and Colorado, Berglund determined that the cities of Albuquerque and Santa Fe are creeping away from each other. The rate of change seems ever so slow to the untrained ear, described as approximately 1.2 'nanostrains' per year."

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Re:GPS Accuracy by BitterOak · 2012-01-17 14:23 · Score: 4, Interesting

They probably use techniques like differential GPS to increase their accuracy.

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Re:There go my plans by R3d+M3rcury · 2012-01-17 14:56 · Score: 5, Interesting

Perhaps I'm taking this too literally...
I'm not sure New Mexico can get any wider--it's borders are set along latitude and longitude lines. So it's more likely that Albuquerque will eventually end up in Arizona and Santa Fe will end up in Texas.