Thanks decimon.
I immediately thought of one of Doctor Evil's lines. Ends with "ridiculous". This also reminds me of the remarkably stupid claim that the sub-3 million year old beech tree fossils on Antarctica were carried there by the winds. Or for that matter, Aristotle moronicaly claiming that rocks don't fall from the sky, that meteorites that the hicks and hillbillies of ancient Greece witnessed falling from the sky had been carried by the winds from elsewhere. And of course, this:
But not a close encounter with another celestial body, nope, never.Earth throws a wobblyThe Chandler Wobble, a mysterious wobble that shakes the Earth as it spins on its axis, was first detected in 1891 by an American astronomer called Seth Carlo Chandler. The force of the wobble is such that it is capable of moving the North Pole about six metres (20 feet) from where it should be and lasts around 433 days, or just 1.2 years. Scientists originally calculated that this phenomenon should naturally run out of steam after 68 years unless some force keeps activating it. And this is precisely what appears to happen. NASA's Richard Gross says the principle causes of the wobble are fluctuating pressures on the bottom of the oceans, the result of changes in temperature, salinity and wind patterns. Dr Michael Tsimplis, from the Southampton Oceanography Centre, UK, says that the Gross theory is plausible. "Any stress you apply to the surface of the Earth can affect its axis," he said.
Tuesday, 18 July, 2000
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