25 replies to this topic

[Still Waters]

www.businessweek.com said:

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).”

Read more...

[TRUEYOUTRUEME]

If this is true that an earthquake such as this can have such an effect as to change the axis of the Earth then my argument made in the "LCROSS: The Moon is a Target" thread about the danger of causing man-made seismic events on the Moon being dangerous to the Earth/Moon relationship is made more credible, imo.

[667-Neighbor of the Beast]

I have heard of this before with other earthquakes.  Yet, still have seen no proof of anything of the such.
Scientists have said that these axis shifts will make drastic changes to the earth, possibly going as far as reversing the seasons.  At least this article doesn't make such claims.

Edited by 667-Neighbor of the Beast, 02 March 2010 - 02:28 PM.

[Siara]

I KNEW IT.  I work up the next morning thinking "WTF, no way was that 6 1/2 hours of sleep.  I've been ripped off here".

Seriously, it's awe inspiring to contemplate the magnitude of these massive geological events.  Makes me aware of what a tiny place humans occupy in the universe.  (cliched, I know, but it's true)

[SRCivic98]

I don't see the just one Earthquake changing anything in the Earth's axis because you also have to remember that the axis too is based off of fields of magnetisum and gravity so one of the two would have to make a switch as well. Now I could how ever see how it might mess with the land's level of smoothness or disrupt the ocean currents causing tsunamis or volcano eruptions. Which if that's the case god forbid if a tremor or full on earthquake was to disrupt the volcanos in Yellowstone park which would trigger a catotrophic events of a chain reaction of earthquakes and finally awaken that super volcano. This would cause what's known as a nuclear winter and cause the earth to reflect the sun's rays and heat back at it which would freeze just about everything here on earth. Life as we know it would end or at least it would wipe out a good seventy to eighty percent of human kind and nature. And lastly on this topic, I don't see how this would effect our time or reverse the seasons? Seasons would have to be changed by my statement earlier. Time is magnetic and be distrupted by gravity too. rotation of the Earth would have speed up or slow down...and even if it did just by a millionth of a second, who in their right mind would ever notice? I know this a lot to discuss or disagree with but then again this is just one opinion. Now if you can show any kind of scientific data of how it effect the earth, the ocean currents, techtonic plates, nature in particular then it maybe cause me to be conviced but right now I'm not conviced nor impressed.

[sinewave]

The seventh strongest quake ever recorded may have shortened Earth days by about 126ms. The location of the quake combined with the angle of the fault were right for altering the rotation of our planet.   Here is some interesting reading from Space.com via Yahoo News.

Edited by sinewave, 02 March 2010 - 05:16 PM.

[Harte]

What we need to do, then, is have everybody on Earth run as fast as they can to the East for about 4 or 5 minutes, all at the same time, to slow the rotation back down to what it is meant to be.

Harte

[SRCivic98]

there is alread a topic dealing with this subject.

http://www.unexplain...0

that is the link to the topic that is already closely related to this topic.

[Vampwitchenstein]

Harte, on 02 March 2010 - 05:33 PM, said:

What we need to do, then, is have everybody on Earth run as fast as they can to the East for about 4 or 5 minutes, all at the same time, to slow the rotation back down to what it is meant to be.

Harte

Lol! Maybe we should also jump up and down all at once a few times see if we can get her back on kilter.

[Stormcrow]

I'm all for doing jumping jacks to get my 126ms of lost time back.   How dare they rob me of this precious time!

[sinewave]

SRCivic98, on 02 March 2010 - 05:41 PM, said:

there is alread a topic dealing with this subject.

http://www.unexplain...0

that is the link to the topic that is already closely related to this topic.

Yep, you are right.   I guess I did not look far enough before posting.

[MichaelW]

Didn't they say the same thing about the quake that cause the Boxing Day tsunami?

I knew something was up. The years have got shorter.

[Raptor]

MichaelW, on 03 March 2010 - 01:46 AM, said:

Didn't they say the same thing about the quake that cause the Boxing Day tsunami?

I knew something was up. The years have got shorter.

To put things in perspective:

It will be approximately 68,571,428,571 days before this change will result in a loss of time equivalent to 24 hours.

Everything affects the Earth's rotation. You walking from your living room to your kitchen does, so does stubbing your toe on the freezer. Given that, there's actually a group (IERS) that regularly meets to calculate how many seconds are required to be added to UTC to keep us in sync with Solar Time.  Between 1972 and now, 24 seconds have been added in to do just that. Now compare that to the 460 microseconds lost per year as a result of this earthquake; it's not too significant, right?

Edited by Raptor, 03 March 2010 - 02:53 PM.

[shaka5]

Harte, on 02 March 2010 - 05:33 PM, said:

What we need to do, then, is have everybody on Earth run as fast as they can to the East for about 4 or 5 minutes, all at the same time, to slow the rotation back down to what it is meant to be.

Harte

i just choked on ginger ale reading this, hahahahha

[shaka5]

I know the time thing isn't really anything...but just the thought that an earthquake can make such a change is kinda kool