NASA: Chile's Earthquake Shortened Earth's Day(wtf?)

[Whaler]

How Chile's Earthquake Shortened Earth's Day

http://www.time.com/time/health/article ... 81,00.html

If you want to make sure you get enough sleep tonight, you might have to get to bed earlier. You don't have to adjust your schedule by much: about 1.26 millionths of a second ought to do it. According to a NASA scientist's computer modeling, that's how much an Earth day should have been shortened by the subterranean upheaval that triggered the Feb. 27 Chilean earthquake. Some basic physics explains why. (See pictures of Chile's massive earthquake.)

Every point on the planet takes the same 24 hours or so to complete a single rotation around Earth's north-south axis, but some points have to move faster than others to spin the full 360° by the one-day deadline. That's because some parts of the planet are much bigger than others, at least in circumference. The Earth's equator is 24,901 miles around. The perimeter of the Arctic Circle, by contrast, is just 9,945 miles, and if you stand five feet from the North Pole, the circumference you inscribe as the Earth rotates is a scant 31.4 feet. Yet in all of those places, it still takes 24 hours to complete a single rotation. (The fact that points along the equator move faster than others is the reason NASA and the European Space Agency put their launch pads in Florida and French Guiana, respectively; fire off your rockets in the direction the Earth spins and you get a free 1,000 miles per hour.) (See the top 10 scientific discoveries of 2009.)

Earthquakes alter planetary speed in two ways. Shifting plates rearrange the distribution of the Earth's mass, causing it to bulge imperceptibly in spots it didn't bulge before and contract in others. That rearrangement should further shift the Earth's inclination, or figure axis (the axis around which the Earth's mass is balanced, which is slightly different from the north-south axis around which the Earth rotates) — in the case of the Chile earthquake, by about 3 inches. The law of conservation of angular momentum, however, requires that even under these exigent circumstances, the Earth's angular momentum stays constant, which means the planet must step on the gas (or the brake) to accommodate shifting mass. The same thing happened in 2004 with the 9.1 Sumatran earthquake that triggered the tsunami. That earthquake should have shifted the Earth's figure axis by 2.76 inches and shortened its day by 6.8 millionths of a second, according to computer models.

If the physics seems a bit arcane, consider that you probably spent much of the last two weeks seeing the angular momentum principle in action — at least if you watched the Olympics. Earthquakes change the Earth's rotation the same way a twirling figure skater changes hers — by extending or tucking her arms in, for instance, to slow down or speed up accordingly. The only difference is that the skater does so decidedly more elegantly.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article ... z0h32ersWW

[Whaler]

The many theories of the Chile earthquake
http://fromtheold.com/news/many-theorie ... 16745.html
Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - 08:57

After the earthquake in Haiti many theories started surfacing on the internet, the most prominent one is that the earthquake started because of people messing around with HAARP and as the Russian president blamed it on a "tectonic weapon".

So now we see the same story again, forums are being flooded with questions of HAARP, could it of been HAARP causing the earthquake and various similar questions.

While we cant answer that simply because if it was HAARP it would be pretty impossible to prove it is was a very unordinary earthquake. According to NASA it shifted the earth's axis, just like the 2004 earthquake it made the day shorter by about a millisecond.

Some would also blame the "elite" for causing these earthquakes in order to control populations. All these theories are now peaking since the Haiti earthquake started it but the Chile earthquake really got people wondering now.

The climate change believers also momentarily started blaming the round of violent earthquakes in the past month or two on global warming. They were quickly silenced on twitter however by angry people stating "dont dare blame this on global warming".

Whatever the theory or whatever your theory is, the fact is that something is happening in the earth's crust. 2012 followers believe that the earth has started shifting and that is the reason for the strong earthquakes. According to 2012 followers the North Pole and the South Pole might swap or the two poles will completely vanish thereby creating multple north and south poles on the earth. (polar shift)

Lets see if the world survives 2012 and what other theories might make sense.

What is your theory of the various giant earthquakes plowing the earth recently?