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Mar. 05, 2010
A Quake That Shook the World?
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| Last week's powerful earthquake in Chile may have shifted the Earth's axis and changed the length of a day, according to NASA researchers. The magnitude 8.8 quake of February 27 was powerful enough to alter the position of the planet's figure axis, an imaginary line around which the mass of the planet rotates, by about 3 inches. That adds up to an Earth day that lasts about 1.26 microseconds less than it did before the earthquake. We'll talk about how geological processes can effect the planet's rotation, and how researchers model planetary movements. |
Produced by Flora Lichtman, Correspondent and Managing Editor, Video
Guests
-
Ross Stein
Geophysicist
U.S. Geological Survey
Menlo Park, California
FEATURED READING
Brilliant Blunders
by Mario Livio
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