Chilean Quake Likely Shifted Axis, Shortened Day

Freakish a scientist from NASA says:

The length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second). The axis about which the Earth’s mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches).

Weirder:

Santa Maria Island off the coast near Concepcion, Chile’s second-largest city, may have been raised 2 meters (6 feet) as a result of the latest quake.

It has happened before:

The magnitude 9.1 Sumatran in 2004 that generated an Indian Ocean tsunami shortened the day by 6.8 microseconds and shifted the axis by about 2.3 milliarcseconds.

via BusinessWeek.


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