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Looks like the Earth did move…

 A USGS map of the Chilean quake.A NASA report says that the Chilean Earthquakee may have shifted the mass balance of our planet.

Earth is not a perfect sphere. Continents and oceans are distributed unevenly around the planet. There’s more land in the north, more water in the south, a great ocean in the west, and so on. As a result of these asymmetries, Earth slowly wobbles as it spins. The figure axis is Earth’s axis of mass balance, and the spin axis wobbles around it.

“The Chilean quake shifted enough material to change the mass balance of our entire planet,” Gross says.

On the whole this isn’t such a big problem the mass balance of Earth shifts about a lot but the shift due to the quake shifted the balance as much in minutes as it usually shifts in a year. Evidently the shift hasn’t been measured yet. Shifts can effect satellite transmission, tides, winds, and day length. Some of the possible effects may be mitigated because the quake was near the equator.

The interesting thing is no one really knows how big the shift really is or what the consequences will be. Quakes have been happening for thousands of year but now we have the ability to monitor and measure changes in our planet.

Sometimes knowledge can be scary — especially when previously we were blissfully unaware of the possible dangers that earthquakes can cause other than the loss of lives and property damage.

Perhaps learning more about earthquakes and their aftermath will help us understand planet Earth a bit better.

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