Shorter days?
Wednesday, 29 December 2004 09:09 am
From RTHK Online:
Asian earthquake may have caused slight wobble to earth’s rotation
2004-12-29 HKT 10:55
The deadly Asian earthquake may have permanently accelerated the Earth’s rotation and shortened days by a fraction of a second according to U.S. scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion laboratory in California. Richard Gross, a geophysicist with the lab theorized that a shift of mass toward the Earth’s center during the quake on Sunday caused the planet to spin 3 microseconds, or one millionth of a second, faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis. Gross added that changes predicted by his model probably are too minuscule to be detected by a global positioning satellite network that routinely measures changes in Earth’s spin, but said the data may reveal a slight wobble in the earth’s rotation.