Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Mother Earth is feeling her age
Just like back in the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed so many people, the Chilean earthquake also slowed the rotation of the earth, but much more significantly, because the pulse traveled through the earth at a much sharper angle to the plane of rotation (since Chile is much farther from the equator than is Thailand and Indonesia).
The quake, the seventh strongest earthquake in recorded history, hit Chile Saturday and should have shortened the length of an Earth day by 1.26 microseconds, according to research scientist Richard Gross at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. One microsecond is one-millionth of a second long.
But worse than that, it actually moved the city of Concepcion a full ten feet to the west!! The whole freaking town!
Other movements around South America caused by the earthquake include:
* Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina and across the continent from the quake’s epicenter, moved about 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) to the west.
* Chile’s capital, Santiago, moved about 11 inches (28 cm) to the west-southwest.
* The cities of Valparaiso and Mendoza, Argentina, northeast of Concepción, also moved significantly.During the 6.9 magnitude 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which occurred along the San Andreas Fault in California, the Pacific plate moved 6.2 feet (about 2 m) to the northwest and 4.3 feet (1.3 m) upward over the North American plate.
Here’s a map showing the relative movement of the region.
And Obama has just cut off our escape route
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