RED ORBIT: The February 27 earthquake that rocked Chile and killed more than 700 people possibly shifted the Earth’s axis and shortened our day ever so slightly, a scientist with NASA told Bloomberg.
Earthquakes have the potential to shift hundreds of miles of rock by several meters, which can disrupt the planet and change the distribution of its mass. The Earth’s rotation is affected by these changes, according to geophysicist Richard Gross of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Gross used 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 told Bloomberg in an email. “The axis about which the Earth’s mass is balanced should have moved by 3 inches.”
Earthquakes have the potential to shift hundreds of miles of rock by several meters, which can disrupt the planet and change the distribution of its mass. The Earth’s rotation is affected by these changes, according to geophysicist Richard Gross of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Gross used 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 told Bloomberg in an email. “The axis about which the Earth’s mass is balanced should have moved by 3 inches.”
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