Posted on 12/27/2004 6:48:27 PM PST by wagglebee
May have shortened the day by 3 microseconds, said gravity expert Richard Gross of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena... On premise a slab slid into core, Gross said he's done calculations 'to see what effect this (earthquake) should have had.' The result: A day shortened... 'We won't know for weeks,' said a geophysicist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 'So it's a guess, as of now'...
Isn't that backwards? Slowing the rotation would mean it's 3 seconds LONGER.
We're doomed, absolutely doomed!! This means in 333,000 years we'll have to set our clocks ahead one whole second. How will humanity get everything done without that second? Democrats will try to set up a Senate Subcomitte with 28 consultants and a $5 million budget to study this troubling development.
Dang, my grade school buddy got me a watch and clock set for Christmas and I'll have to recalibrate every watch and clock I have. B-) Time to fire up WWV on the shortwave and recalibrate everything again. B-) BTW, I wonder if the National Institute of Standards and Technology will have to recalibrate the atomic clock again? I remember every since the 1970's, they had to put in a "leap second" every few years to compensate for the slowing of the Earth's rotation.
Some nutjob called Rush's show today (with Roger Hedgecock subbing for Rush) and tried to say that we have messed up the surface of the earth by building highways, blasting tunnels through the mountains, sucking gas and water from beneath the earth, etc. and have messed up the stability of the earth, which is no longer like a geodesic dome because we have pulled so many of the props out ... or some such weird thing. Roger cut him off pretty quickly so one didn't have to listen to much of his drivel ... and stated that earthquakes, etc., have been happening since long before man was driving SUVs ... or even inhabiting the planet.
No, micro- means millionth, as in micrometer. Milli- means thousandth, as in millimeter.
A microgram is a millionth of a gram. A micosecond is a millionth of a second.
Darn! I just used up much more time telling you this.
According to my calculations, it was more in the neighborhood of 4 microseconds. Give or take 3 or 4 microseconds.
You're right. I misread the article as 3 microseconds/year when it actually said 3 microseconds/DAY!
So I was off by a factor of 365! Good observation.
So instead of 3 seconds per million years it is actually 3 seconds per million yrs/365. Right?
"That's 3 less microseconds that I have to spend at work tomorrow......"
If you work a typical 8 hour day you might spend 1 less microsecond at work on a typical "great-quake-shortened" day. The 3 less microseconds is over a typical 24 hour day.
ROFLMAO
Based on continued estimates from some regions, I will be shocked if tomorrow it doesn't rise to at least 30,000.
Do you know where I was wrong and he/she was right?
I misread the article as 3 microseconds per year instead of per day.
The article is not perfectly clear. I think he said the length of the day might be shortened by approximately 3 microseconds. IF - contary to fact - the earth rotated at a uniform unchanging rate then a step change of 0.000003 seconds would mean the length of the would change from 86400 to 86399.999997 seconds per day. You do the math from here.
is that so?
.
Yes, you're right it means LONGER days not SHORTER. (I am such a retard)
Now I'm getting depressed.
Happy Birthday!
That, and the fact that the rotation is supposed to have sped up, not slowed down. And it wasn't clear whether you mean a day a million years from now will actually be 3 seconds shorter, or if that's just the cumulative difference over that period.
I am. I am.
Sounds like one of my relatives. The good news for me is that I will now have to spend slightly less time with them whenever I see them.
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