Posted on 03/12/2011 2:04:19 AM PST by EternalVigilance
The powerful earthquake that unleashed a devastating tsunami Friday appears to have moved the main island of Japan by 8 feet (2.4 meters) and shifted the Earth on its axis.
"At this point, we know that one GPS station moved (8 feet), and we have seen a map from GSI (Geospatial Information Authority) in Japan showing the pattern of shift over a large area is consistent with about that much shift of the land mass," said Kenneth Hudnut, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
Reports from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy estimated the 8.9-magnitude quake shifted the planet on its axis by nearly 4 inches (10 centimeters).
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Yes but Japanese feet are a lot shorter, and that causes me to wonder whose inch is it anyway? And what has this to do with axes?
Okay, okay...
Look, when they started to say the ground zero rift was 150 to 185 miles long, I was on board. When they said that rift was 50 miles wide, things became a little fuzzy for me.
Some of this stuff I understand, and other parts are somewhat suspect to me.
A fissure 185 miles long by fifty miles wide would essentially mean to me, that the earth opened up a massive cavity. I’m going to have to put that concept in my waiting to be explained folder.
Would an axis shift affect a compass reading or GPS device?
Thanks to both of you. I appreciate it.
I would be VERY careful Who you mock.
Good grief, they’ll have to shut down more of the runways at the Tampa airport if this keeps up.
Here’s a link to the Japan Meteorological Societies webpage showing where the tsunami hit. There isn’t any map that shows anything like the flood plain area, like I saw after Katrina, but this gives a good idea.
http://www.jma.go.jp/en/tsunami/joho.html
Congress is considering a law be passed to give the government control over where people live so as to weight certain areas of the earth more to help control “Global Balance”.
The only people I mock are those with a fetish for apocalypse, and a laughable belief that they are so holy that they are just soooooo sure that Jesus has a photo of them on his office wall because they call themselves “Christians”.
They make God and Christ out to be simpletons. They are no different than the ones in 1000, 1666, 1845 and in other years that were so sure it was the “end of days”.
Very interesting.
It doesn't go to follow that the axis shift if for the worse. I'd like to see what effect it really had, how it was shifted and how far.
...and if I had a boat
I would hope that boat would float. :)
I hope that you are joking, but with the majority in Congress seeming to be a bunch of whacked-out loonies, I would not be surprised if you are serious...and right.
too funny!
Well yes, but what does Justin Bieber think?
/s
Correct, but not a huge issue the earth rotational's axis as defined by the inertial terrestrial reference frame drifts a small amount every year relative to the celestial inertial reference frame.We are currently using ITRF 2007 the ITFR07 is tied to the ICFR using VLBI observations from extra galactic pulsars. What has shifted is earth rotational axis as seen from the celestial frame, this displacement when plotted from the previous axis geoid intercept point has a displacement of 10". The reason for this shift is as the earths plates moved relative to each other the mass distribution of the plates shifted thus shifting the earths total center of mass and this shift is why the axis of rotation moved relative to the fixed celestial inertial frame. GPS can detect this shift as the GPS birds fly in celestial inertial space and when the earth shifts below them the CORS stations detect the shift in positions. Every CORS station is tied to ITFR00 and has its plate velocity vectors factored into the solution provided to geoinfomatic users such as myself.
Best line of the day!
I guess you misunderstood my point. As is said:
There are natural cycles of weather variability, and that's all we've been experiencing.
In other words, we aren't experiencing "unusual" weather. It is perfectly within the norms of natural climate variability.
I attended UT Dallas many moons ago. Is it still primarily a commuter campus?
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