Chile quake may have moved Earth's axis

Chile quake moved Earth's axis, shortened days: scientist

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AFP - Wednesday, March 3

A gap in a road caused by Saturday's earthquake and the ensuing tsunami in Pulluhue, 320 km south of Santiago. The powerful earthquake that shook Chile on Saturday probably shifted the Earth's axis and made days slightly shorter, a NASA scientist said.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - – The powerful earthquake that shook Chile on Saturday probably shifted the Earth's axis and made days slightly shorter, a NASA scientist said.

Richard Gross, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, calculated that the planet's axis would have shifted by eight centimeters (three inches) during the 8.8 magnitude quake, NASA said in a statement.

Earth days are 24 hours long because that's the amount of time it takes the planet to make one full rotation on its axis, so shifting the axis would affect rotation.

If, indeed, the planet's axis did shift by eight centimeters during the Chilean quake, days would have shortened by 1.26 microseconds, Gross calculated.

A microsecond is one-millionth of a second, so no need to adjust watches just yet.

The Chilean quake shifted the Earth's axis by even more than the 9.1-magnitude temblor off Indonesia that set off the deadly tsunami in Asia in 2004, Gross worked out.

That's partly because the faultline responsible for the earthquake in Chile "dips into Earth at a slightly steeper angle than does the fault responsible for the 2004 Sumatran earthquake" and is more effective at moving Earth's mass vertically and shifting the planet's axis.

The 2004 quake in Asia caused the Earth to move by around seven centimeters and chopped an estimated 6.8 microseconds off the length of a day, NASA said.

From Yahoo.SG News; original article is found here

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Giant underwater volcano found off Indonesia

05/30/2009 | 04:58 PM

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Scientists scouring the ocean floor to study the nature of tsunamis discovered a massive underwater volcano off Indonesia's western coast.

The 15,000-foot- (4,600-meter-) high mountain spans 30 miles (50 kilometers) at its base, Yusuf Surachman Djajadihardja, a marine geologist with the government's Agency for Assessment and Application Technology, said Friday. Its discovery was "completely unexpected," he said.

It was not immediately clear if the volcano is active, but he said if it were and it erupted, it would be "very, very dangerous."

An international team of scientists discovered the volcano 205 miles (330 kilometers) west of Sumatra island while carrying out a survey of the Indian Ocean floor earlier this month, Djajadihardja said. The tip of the volcano is 1,380 meters (1,260 yards) below the water's surface.

The goal of their research was to better understand the cause of disasters like the 2004 Asian tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen nations, more than half of them in Indonesia, which was closest to the epicenter.

Indonesia straddles a chain of fault lines and volcanoes known as the Pacific "Ring of Fire" and is prone to seismic activity. – AP

From GMANews.tv; see the source article here.

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Giant underwater volcano found off Indonesia

05/30/2009 | 04:58 PM

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Scientists scouring the ocean floor to study the nature of tsunamis discovered a massive underwater volcano off Indonesia's western coast.

The 15,000-foot- (4,600-meter-) high mountain spans 30 miles (50 kilometers) at its base, Yusuf Surachman Djajadihardja, a marine geologist with the government's Agency for Assessment and Application Technology, said Friday. Its discovery was "completely unexpected," he said.

It was not immediately clear if the volcano is active, but he said if it were and it erupted, it would be "very, very dangerous."

An international team of scientists discovered the volcano 205 miles (330 kilometers) west of Sumatra island while carrying out a survey of the Indian Ocean floor earlier this month, Djajadihardja said. The tip of the volcano is 1,380 meters (1,260 yards) below the water's surface.

The goal of their research was to better understand the cause of disasters like the 2004 Asian tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen nations, more than half of them in Indonesia, which was closest to the epicenter.

Indonesia straddles a chain of fault lines and volcanoes known as the Pacific "Ring of Fire" and is prone to seismic activity. – AP

From GMANews.tv; see the source article here.

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