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Because of Sunday's gargantuan quake, planet Earth is ringing like a church bell. You can't hear it, but it's being measured at seismic stations around the world, including Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y. It will last for three days, perhaps longer. The quake, which measured 9.0 on the Richter scale, was caused by the shifting of geological plates along a 600-mile area. This changed the Earth's mass. As the mass returns to normal, it moves back and forth, much like a church bell when struck by a tong, said Stony Brook geophysicist Teng-fong Wong.[snip] The quake...

(CNN) -- Dramatic new data from the December 26, 2004, Sumatran-Andaman earthquake that generated deadly tsunamis show the event created the longest fault rupture and the longest duration of faulting ever observed, according to three reports by an international group of seismologists published Thursday in the journal "Science." "Normally, a small earthquake might last less than a second; a moderate sized earthquake might last a few seconds. This earthquake lasted between 500 and 600 seconds (at least 10 minutes)," said Charles Ammon, associate professor of geosciences at Penn State University. The quake released an amount