Posted on 01/01/2005 9:38:48 PM PST by Coleus
Beyond killing tens of thousands and unleashing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions, the twinned earthquake and tsunami that struck Southeast Asia Sunday altered the angle of the Earth on its axis, moved the North Pole, pushed walls of water throughout all the world's oceans and shifted the soil as far away as Newark, researchers are reporting.
Scientists said yesterday they are looking beyond the tragedy to try to extract meaning from an event of such magnitude. They want to learn how the Earth responds as a system to one of Nature's terrible jolts. And they wonder about the Earth's resilience.
Calculations performed by Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California show that the quake sped up the rotation of the Earth and enlarged its wobble, causing the length of a day to shrink permanently by 3 millionths of a second. It also moved the North Pole 1 inch, he found.
Researchers at the Lamont-Doherty facility in New York, part of Columbia University, have been tracking earthquakes for decades and say their instruments showed that the quake rang the Earth like a bell. Seismic waves emanated from the epicenter, like ripples moving out from a pebble thrown onto a pond surface.
Armbruster, the Lamont-Doherty seismologist, said that, though he hasn't completed his analysis, he believes the quake moved the soil in the Newark and greater metropolitan area by a half- inch. The temblor on the other side of the world pushed the ground up that far, then back down the same distance. The movement was so swift, it was not noticed by residents of the region, he said.
A well-studied 1964 quake in Alaska of a greater magnitude moved the ground in New York up 2 inches and then down 2 inches, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
Can a Tsunami hit New Jersey? Can the Continental Shelf stop it? And what kind of provisions, alert system and emergency plan does the NJ State Police, National Guard, Port Authority, municipal and county Police and US Coast Guard have planned. Call them up this week and find out, I bet they have none.
The sky is falling.
The continental shelf would probably make it worse...not stop it..
Unfortunately with something that has apparently changed the Earth is such a way, you have to think that eventually everything will to back to the way it was. Will it take another big quake to do so?
that is the question...
So is Newark now 1/2 inch closer to heaven or further away from it?
farther, not further.
a 1/2 inch further down the toilet. But don't worry, they're building an arena which will solve everything.
Santa falls down and go boo...
Does this mean my employer will dock my pay for the shorter day?
I wonder what these changes do or do not do to oil production around the world.
If you believe in the science of plate tectonics, things will never go back the way they were at a previous time, but there will always be continuous change.
you see I think it is more of a give and take type thing....
A pressure release in one sector might cause pressure to build up in another....
maybe....
Just as important, what do you have planned for you and your family for such contingencies? And our neighbors? Do you ever wonder if we aren't becoming too dependent on the state?
FGS
Just what I needed. I don't have enough time in my day to get all my work done already, and now it's shorter.
Prompting Jim McGreevy to ask his Sex Toy du Jour, "Was it good for you?"
What if the entire theory of the break up of Pangea (or Gondwanaland) is wrong? What if the continents drifted differently and the big boom shifted the continents to where they are now by altering the original axis???
This is a joke, right?
Possibly, but the geological evidence I seen doesn't support that theory. As an amateur example, the Atlantic Ridge is spreading apart, a horizontal movement, while the Pacific Ring of Fire has more of a vertical movement.
If anything the Atlantic Ridge is pushing on the North American and Asian plates and forcing them on top of each other, like a VW Beetle running underneath a semi tractor trailer.
Then again, I am an electrical engineer and my knowledge of geology, etc. comes from Discover Magazine and The Learning Channel, so your mileage may vary.
If you work for Dell, the answer is yes - your pay will be reduced.
A 3ms change in the earth's spin rate will likely play h*ll with all manner of satellite tracking and timing, including GPS, I would imagine. I can only imagine all the software changes and adjustments that will have to be made for all of the satellites the world uses.
I meant to say 3us rate change...
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