[time-nuts] Q/noise of Earth as an oscillator

Tom Van Baak tvb at LeapSecond.com
Tue Jul 26 18:45:52 EDT 2016


Hal Murray wrote: 
> I've seen mention that the rotation rate of the Earth changed by a few 
> microseconds per day as a result of the 2011 earthquake in Japan.  Does that 
> show up in any data?  Your recent graph doesn't go back that far and it's got 
> a full scale of 2000 microseconds so a few is going to be hard to see.

Right. The IERS graphs I posted are real measurements of earth rotation. The earthquake / tsunami numbers are theoretical calculations only; numbers far smaller than what can be measured.

A couple of guys at NASA have carefully modeled all of this and the predictions are quite interesting. It's just that the official NASA/JPL press releases, once filtered by the popular press, give the impression that these are worrisome or real measurable effects on the earth's rotation rate or axis tilt. Instead they are order(s) of magnitude below what can be measured, given the level of VLBI resolution or earth rotation noise.

Here are three recent press releases:

2005 "NASA Details Earthquake Effects on the Earth"
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=716

2010 "Chilean Quake May Have Shortened Earth Days"
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth-20100301.html

2011 "Japan Quake May Have Shortened Earth Days, Moved Axis"
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/japanquake/earth20110314.html

Google for Richard Gross and Benjamin Fong Chao for more information.

/tvb

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Hal Murray" <hmurray at megapathdsl.net>
To: "Tom Van Baak" <tvb at leapsecond.com>; "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement" <time-nuts at febo.com>
Cc: <hmurray at megapathdsl.net>
Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2016 5:59 PM
Subject: Q/noise of Earth as an oscillator


> 
> tvb at LeapSecond.com said:
>> Earth is a very noisy, wandering, drifting, incredibly-expensive-to-measure,
>> low-precision (though high-Q) clock.
> 
> What is the Q of the Earth?  It might be on one of your web pages, but I 
> don't remember seeing it.  Google found a few mentions, but I didn't find a 
> number.
> 
> I did find an interesting list of damping mechanisms in a geology book.  
> Geology-nuts are as nutty as time-nuts.  Many were discussing damping of 
> seismic waves rather than rotation.
> 
> I've seen mention that the rotation rate of the Earth changed by a few 
> microseconds per day as a result of the 2011 earthquake in Japan.  Does that 
> show up in any data?  Your recent graph doesn't go back that far and it's got 
> a full scale of 2000 microseconds so a few is going to be hard to see.
> 



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