Earth knocked off it's axis...

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Chile earthquake knocked Earth off its axis and made days shorter, says Nasa

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 6:57 PM on 03rd March 2010

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The Chilean earthquake has shortened the length of the day by making the Earth rotate faster, according to Nasa scientists.

But you might not have noticed, as it was only by about one-millionth of a second.

Richard Gross has revealed the disaster, which has killed at least 795 people, shortened the length of a day by about 1.26 microseconds. A microsecond is one millionth of a second.
A police officer guards a street in Talcahuano, Chile, yesterday after it was flattened by the earthquake

A police officer guards a street in Talcahuano, Chile, yesterday after it was flattened by the earthquake

Perhaps more impressive is how much the 8.8 magnitude quake shifted Earth's axis.

Dr Gross, from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, calculated the quake should have moved Earth's figure axis (the axis about which Earth's mass is balanced) by about three inches.

Earth's figure axis is not the same as its north-south axis; they are offset by about 30 feet.

By comparison, Dr Gross said the Sumatran earthquake from 2004 should have shortened the length of day by 6.8 microseconds and shifted Earth's axis by 2.76inches.

It did not shift the Earth's axis as far because the earthquake was located nearer the equator.


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Dr Gross said the calculated changes in the length of a day are permanent. But he added: ‘These changes are very, very small.’

The length of a day is the time it takes for the planet to complete one rotation - 86,400 seconds or 24 hours.
Soldiers patrol the streets during curfew hours in Concepcion, Chile three days after an earthquake killed at least 700 people

Soldiers patrol the streets during curfew hours in Concepcion, Chile three days after an earthquake killed at least 700 people

An earthquake can make Earth rotate faster by nudging some of its mass closer to the planet's axis, just as ice skaters can speed up their spins by pulling in their arms.

Conversely, a quake can slow the rotation and lengthen the day if it redistributes mass away from that axis, Dr Gross said.

Chilean rescue crews fanned out with sniffer dogs today around quake-ravaged cities and villages, some still hoping to find survivors and others facing the daunting task of recovering bodies buried under mountains of rubble.

Four days after the 8.8-magnitude earthquake rocked south-central Chile and killed nearly 800 people, police and troops managed to quell the looting and violence that brought chaos to the hard-hit city of Concepcion, 70 miles southeast of the epicentre.

An 18-hour nightly curfew remained in place in Concepcion, one of a handful of cities and villages where some 7,000 soldiers were patrolling the streets to keep order and ensure that food and water were properly distributed.

Military trunks and helicopters in a base in the quake-hit city of Talca set off with food and water for victims, while rescue crews stepped up the search in towns from Concepcion further north to Constitucion for any survivors trapped in the debris.
Soldiers patrol the streets during curfew hours in Concepcion, Chile three days after an earthquake killed at least 700 people

Soldiers patrol the streets during curfew hours in Concepcion, Chile three days after an earthquake killed at least 700 people

At dawn, firemen with hammers and cranes searched for people trapped in a building that had collapsed in Concepcion.

So far, 795 people have been confirmed dead, either killed by one of the world's biggest earthquakes in a century or the tsunami it triggered along Chile's coastline.

The death toll is likely to rise, with some reports putting the number of missing as high as 500 in Constitucion alone.

The city, with a population of nearly 40,000, accounts for nearly half the official death toll and was one of several coastal towns nearly wiped out by the quake and tsunamis.

Chilean emergency officials and the military blamed each other for not clearly warning coastal villages of tsunamis after the quake.

Officially, the government puts the number of missing at 19, based on specific cases reported to the police. But officials acknowledge the figure could be much higher.

With looting now largely under control, authorities dispatched crews with dogs trained to locate the dead, to start the grim task of pulling bodies from the rubble.

Many Chileans complained that scores of deaths could have been avoided had the government responded more decisively to the quake, which set off a tsunami a few hours later that killed many along the coastline.



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Yes. I did notice that the day seemed like it was a nanosecond or two shorter lately.

I never noticed anything. What would happen if they had a 9.0 or a 10 earthquuake. Scary stuff. I always wonder about these damn underground explosions they do with nuclear bombs like in North Korea or Iran or Iraq. I mean something has to give in the Earth. We are just having way too many earthquakes lately.