Quake May Have Altered Earth's Rotation

Drudge Report ^ | 12/27/04 | Matt Drudge

[wagglebee]

May have shortened the day by 3 microseconds, said gravity expert Richard Gross of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena... On premise a slab slid into core, Gross said he's done calculations 'to see what effect this (earthquake) should have had.' The result: A day shortened... 'We won't know for weeks,' said a geophysicist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 'So it's a guess, as of now'...

[The Teen Conservative]

It was awful last night! I lost a lot of sleep! Like, one fourth of a whole REM!

[antiRepublicrat]

I find it absurd that a highly-educated scientist, who is no doubt highly paid and gets piles of money in grants, has nothing better to do than figure out where 3 microseconds went.

There could be some things out there that might be affected by this: scientific tests, space travel, etc. Who knows, but I'm sure it's somebody's job to find out what this may affect.

[musical_airman]

Forgive me......I just started messing with HTML today......I'm having entirely too much fun!

[EternalVigilance]

A stitch in time saves nine.

I have no idea what that actually means, but it seemed to fit...

[Jay Howard Smith]

Sorry, but you're off by a factor of 1000. "Micro" means 1/1000. Still, 1000 times almost nothing is still almost nothing! ;-)

Your confusing 'micro' with 'milli' seconds.

[kayak]

Congratulations! Been there, done that. It makes monsters out of all of us until the novelty wears off ... then we just post pics when they actually have a purpose ... LOL!

[BerniesFriend]

Cool..is this like in the 1978 movie "Superman" with Christopher Reeves..(Who would be walking today if horseface was elected president..oh..and if Reeves hadn't tragically passed away a few months ago)..where Superman turned back the rotation of the earth and made time go backwards..thus saving Lois Lane and etc....is this the same??????

[kayak]

ping

[missyme]

The Indonesian quake struck just three days after an 8.1 quake struck the ocean floor between Australia and Antarctica, causing buildings to shake hundreds of miles away but no serious damage or injury.

Quakes reaching a magnitude 8 are very rare. A quake registering magnitude 8 rocked Japan's northern island of Hokkaido on Sept. 25, 2003, injuring nearly 600 people. An 8.4 magnitude tremor that stuck off the coast of Peru on June 23, 2001, killed 74.

And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;

Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things BEGIN TO COME TO PASS, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. (Luke 21:25-28)

[wagglebee]

Thanks.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Three millionths shorter. We get leap seconds because of the secular deceleration of the earth's rotation. If the earth's rate of rotation slows by 0.002 seconds per day per century, at the end of 20th century, we would expect to lose one second every 18 months. To keep time reckoned by the earth's orientation (celestial time) synchronized with atomic time standards officials in France decide to add or subtract a second from UTC from time to time.

As days get longer, we will need fewer leap years (intercalary days) to keep the calendar aligned with the seasons. At 0.002 sec per day per century, it would take about 5,000 years to loose one complete day, which about as long accuracy of the Gregorian Calendar, so it should not effect leap years in our lifetime.

[mplsconservative]

"I'll be 22 on Jan 8 (times 2)"

Welcome to the fourty-four club.

I was truly under the delusion that I was 43 until my dear, sweet mother reminded me I was not.

I'm now truly an old fart that I forgot my age. (<;

[Thinkin' Gal]

Isaiah 24:20 The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again.

Coincidence?

[P.O.E.]

Thanks.

So if I understand you correctly, at one extreme, the theoretical case would be if this mass fell into an empty underground pocket of air (same volume) the result would be more relative mass closer to the core. In which case we'd see a permanent effect.

[airborne]

Me and Elvis, Nixon and David Bowie.

[newzjunkey]

On premise a slab slid into core...

Does the premise have any supporting data?

[JustDoItAlways]

Sorry, this is bogus. The earthquake did not affect the earth's rotation.

But the length of the day has been getting longer since the moon was created 4.4 billion years ago. The moon's gravity causes a slight drag on the rotation through the tides and angular momentum.

The day was about 15 hours long 4.4 billion years ago to today where it is 24 hours long.

Over those 4.4 billion years, how many magnitude 9.0 earthquakes have there been? If there was one every 30 years which sounds about right and it added 3 microseconds to the day or off the day, the day would be well over 1,000 hours long or there would be no day.

I hate junk science.

[Indy Pendance]

I only have one dead president, Woodrow Wilson.

[rbg81]

Maybe the orbit shift will cause the Earth to head toward the sun, as in "The Day the Earth Caught Fire".

[Bean Counter]

Talk about your long-haired arithmetic!

I recall seeing an article some years ago, where a physicist calculated how much the earth's roatation slowed, every time the Space Shuttle launched. It wasn't by much, but he darn sure came up with a number!

What is really amazing to me is the report that the entire Sumatran Peninsula moved 100 feet.

It's hard to get your mind around the forces involved here...

And, despite what the environmentalists would have us believe, man's power to damage the planet pales beside the forces of nature...