The earthquake that killed more than 700 people in Chile on Feb. 27 probably shifted the Earth’s axis and shortened the day, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist said.
Earthquakes can involve shifting hundreds of kilometers of rock by several meters, changing the distribution of mass on the planet. This affects the Earth’s rotation, said Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who uses a computer model to calculate the effects.
“The length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second),” Gross, said today in an e-mailed reply to questions. “The axis about which the Earth’s mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches).”
Friday, May 22nd
Last update08:31:53 AM GMT
Headlines
Standing in his laboratory, Harvard professor Sean Eddy gazes at a row of vacant work stations....
Officials are investigating whether a huge fire that destroyed a top marine science laboratory at the...
Brilliant splashes of green, purple and pink will streak the night sky for many stargazers in...
The highest levels of the federal government are paying attention to a list of people who...
