[time-nuts] Japan Quake May Have Shortened Earth Days, Moved Axis

Jim Lux jimlux at earthlink.net
Fri Jul 15 13:14:00 UTC 2011


On 7/15/11 12:48 AM, Tom Van Baak (lab/iPad) wrote:
>> 1E14 we might be able to notice
>
> Hal,
>
> No. Look at the adev of the earth (earlier posting). The length of earth day varies in the *milli*second range, day to day. VLBI measurements are under 0.1 millisecond, which comes to about 1e-9 resolution.
>
> Realize that none of the NASA "earthquake may have shortened" press releases are about real measurements of rotation. They are just impressive models of changes in momentum. The predictions are in the *micro*second range. The press does not always distinguish between milli and micro.
>
>

And, there's a somewhat non-noise-free-channel from the guys doing the 
calculations to the public affairs officer to the media.

This kind of thing is actually sort of interesting in a planetary sense. 
  While earth is pretty stable, there are places where there are a lot 
more earthquakes and internal tidal forces (Jupiter's moons) and changes 
in rotation rate of the moons might be detectable by radar.

Is Io gradually slowing?  There's also coupling to Jupiter, of course 
(e.g. our Moon having a rotation rate synced to orbital period)

What about Mercury?



More information about the time-nuts mailing list