Friday 5 March 2010

Chilean earthquake has literally shaken the world

The recent earthquake in Chile may have moved the Earth's axis by about three inches, according to a NASA scientist. Richard Gross has also calculated that the quake is likely to have shortened the length of a day by about 1.26 microseconds (µs). A microsecond is one millionth of a second.

The calculations take into account the position of the earthquake and the direction of the fault line, although the figures are too small to confirm and are likely to change when additional quake data is available.

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