Surprising consequences of deadly earthquake in Chile by Zuzana Zelenakova

Chile has experienced one of the strongest earthquakes in history, it reached magnitude of 8.8 and killed more than 120 people. Chile is country that is in high risk of earthquakes, it is due to the fact that it lies on the spot where two tectonic plates meet, the Pacific and South American plate to be more precise. According to seismologist, there is at least one quake of magnitude eight and more a year. Dr Brian Baptie, of the British Geological Survey, said: "In global terms this is a very rare quake. Chile has experienced some very big quakes in the past. It was about 124 miles north-east of the largest earthquake ever recorded – 9.5, in 1960 – which result! ed in a destructive tsunami that killed many thousands of people around the Pacific." The quake´s epicenter was located about 70 miles from the city of Concepcion. People noticed the earthquake as far as Argentina. According to NASA scientists, devastating earthquake in Chile that threw the country into turmoil has had some interesting consequences. The scientists are speculating that it might have altered the Earth´s axis and thus shorten days on our planet. According to the favorite NASA analogy that was uttered by one of its own, Benjamin Fong Chao, back in 2005 “Any worldly event that involves the movement of mass affects the Earth’s rotation.” And the Chile earthquake was caused by the mass shift. According to Richard Gross from NASA´s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and his colleagues, it shortened the day by 1.26 microseconds. The planet completes one rotation in one day and earthquake can make it rotate faster by pu! shing some of Earth´s mass closer to its axis. It you are! wonderi ng if it works also the other way round the answer is yes, it does. The quake can slow the rotation of the Earth by transferring the mass away from the axis.

related story (sgx16657): http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20100303/sc_space/chileearthqu...

by Zuzana Zelenakova for SigEx Ventures (http://sigexventures.com)

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