I’m sure that by “winter” he means northern hemisphere winter. In other words, the whole globe rotates more slowly in January and more quickly in July. There’s no torque.
That’s not the way I read Squink’s link (say that three times fast).
My emphasis.
This of course refers to the Indian Ocean quake but the kunilou’s link suggests that we’re talking about the same thing.
What does it mean by “shifted the north pole”? Does that mean the center of the magnetic pole changed which chunk of land it’s on, or that the physical location of the north pole relative to the ecliptic has shifted as a natural consequence of very slight change in tilt? You may be right, but it sounds like we may be describing the same issue differently.
Cheap crap quartz wristwatches, maybe. My digital wristwatch rarely gains or loses more than a second per month (and it’s not a fancy radio controlled one or anything like that).
Do the locations of the poles change?
You’re right that, based on a dumbed down news report, we can’t be sure what’s meant. Nevertheless, I took it to mean that the geographic pole moved to a chunk of land 3" from where it was.
I don’t know if that makes sense or not but the picture in my mind that same old figure skater only this time she just pulls in one arm. That would decrease her moment of inertia but also change her centre of gravity and therefore move her axis of rotation.
Do they have to recalculate everything about the earth’s rotation and stuff whenever a big quake like this hits? I imagine that for little things like angle of a building, strength of a bridge, they don’t have to do much adjusting, but if astronomers are using some base earth measurement to look at stars which are light years away, would a tilt of a few inches make a difference?
They do – so do people trying to calculate the positions of satellites. Fortunately, the International Earth Rotation Service provides tables of the necessary corrections. It’s not just earthquakes – the Earth wobbles and shifts slightly all the time, due to external gravitational influences and internal shifts in the Earth’s mass distribution. but we’re talking small fractions of a degree.
There are two sets of poles - the geographic poles and the magnetic poles. The magnetic poles certainly drift. Here’s a mapof where the north magnetic pole has been recently.
The geographic poles move also, and by a lot more than three inches–see the Chandler wobble. Note that this is actual realignment of the axis of rotation relative to the stars, not surface movement due to plate tectonics or shifting ice.
Aw, I thought we were on our way to the science in “The Core” become accurate. 