Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Shaken

Stories like this totally freak me out.  Earthquakes don't just devastate the affected region; they alter time.  The earth's rotation may have shifted enough to shorten our days after the earthquake in Chile.  By an imperceptible amount, but still, it's freaky. 

I don't understand much about geology, physics, astronomy, and where those sciences all converge.  But I always thought it was supposed to be bad for the earth to get knocked off its rotation.  Evidently, the NASA scientists don't seem unnerved by news that a large earthquake can literally shake the planet off its axis.  So I guess I don't need to worry about it, either.
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1 comment:

BellsforStacy said...

From what I read at NASA, it didn't really shake us "off" the axis, per say, it re-distributed the mass of the planet.

Like when an ice skater spins around and around with her arms out, and then gets faster when she pulls her arms in to her chest? She's changed her bodies affect on the rotation because she's altered her masses affect on the rotation.

They said that the earthquake that caused the big Tsunami in 2004 changed something too, since that was a much bigger earthquake (9.9 or something? though it was in the ocean right?).

Either way, devestating stuff. And there aren't enough minutes in any day to afford to lose .0001 seconds off any of them!

March 3, 2010 at 7:25 AM

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