Four inches is what I heard. Still, the earth has shifted on its axis. What does this mean for mankind?
Cite for this? Not that I believe it’s impossible, but I’d like an actual reference.
Anyway, it probably means nothing. Minor axial shifts presumably happen with any large earthquake, and earthquakes comparable in strength have happened in the past.
Crud, I was in such a hurry I forgot the link.
Won’t it just “wobble” back to where it was? Admittedly, I’m not an astronomer.
If the background neutrino count has also increased, I’d suggest you haul ass to those secret factories in Tibet post haste.
Four inches is less than one millionth of one degree, so I’m thinking it’s the kind of thing noone would even have noticed before satellite positioning.
Speaking of satellite positioning, if the Earth rotated by 4 inches under its cloud of GPS satellites, I think that means all sorts of surveying work now has a jump in it. I am curious how this is handled!
If you just scrunch back a bit, it’s like it never happened.
Well, okay then!
Wondering the same thing, I looked around online. Apparently the day has been shortened by 1.6 microseconds. The same thing happened after the Chile and Aceh quakes, so I gather it’s not uncommon. I don’t know if this means the poles (true as opposed to magnetic) move as well?
Must be that terrifying, world ending Pole Shift they were trying to warn us about.
Great! :mad: And it’s daylight savings time tonight on top of it. I’m never gonna get enough sleep tonight.
No WONDER I woke up from my nap feeling inadequately rested.
Just hang on, it’ll all be explained in the new Roland Emmerich/Michael Bay movie "Limited Axis".
With an All-(B-List)-Star Cast: Bruce Greenwood as the misunderstood scientist, Sela Ward as the climatologist who can’t stand him (well, at the beginning of the film…), **William Fichtner **as the Navy guy skeptical of his unorthodox ways, and Craig T. Nelson as the grizzled old coach whose teachings (to “never ever stop believing in yourself”) resolve a major plot point.
And Danny Bonaduce as himself.
I think this means someone has to trek up to the North Pole and move the sign. We can just call the guys at Amundsen and tell them to move theirs. 
I seem to hear about this happening every time there’s a major earthquake.
I would assume that it happens all the time, and doesn’t really affect anything. We just now have the ability to detect it.
Easy. Just add 4 inches to all surveying marks. It would be a global data replacement.
But in what direction? Should I move to the left a little, or is my chair OK where it is?
This happens every time there is an earthquake. For example, the Chile quake last year shifted the axis 3 inches and shortened the length of the day by 1.26 millionths of a second.
The Earth isn’t perfectly spherical, because it actually bulges a bit along the equator.
Does that bulge now have to move 4 inches?
You know, every time you fart you affect the earth’s rotation. The only thing that saves us from Armageddon is the fact that you (presumably) fart in all different directions.