Chile Earthquake Causes Shorter Days - Crustal Slip?

Yep. Our day is now shorter. In addition the axis of rotation has changed. Richard Gross, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and colleagues calculated that Saturday's quake in Chile shortened the day by 1.26 microseconds. Fortunately it will be a while before we see 23 hour days since it would require around 2.8 billion magnitude 8.8 earthquakes to do it! In addition the axis of the earths rotation has shifted to one side by a few inches.

The main worry however is (or should be) the increasing rate of vulcanism. this is exactly the sort of activity which could precede a crustal slip event. Quakes like the Chile earthquake are what we can expect along all the fault lines as the earths crust is forced to rotate by weight imbalance around its core.

This theory which explains historical phenomena like the magnetic poles shifting and warm climate creatures like mammoths being deep frozen so fast that the food in their gut does not have time to decompose was a favorite one of Einsteins. He was right about relativity so why not about this?

What is known from fossilised magnetic crystals is that the earths crust has in the past moved almost 180 degrees in one go. Other smaller slips of seven or ten degrees are commonplace. Fag Packet type calculations show that civilisation would be hard put to survive even one of the smaller slips, depending on how fast it happened and more importantly how much force occurred when it stopped! Buildings especially tall ones are not designed to stand large sideways G forces. A whole ocean full of water is not going to stop moving when the crust beneath it does - Tsunamis have nothing on what could occur then.

This is the way friction based phenomena such as a crustal slippage work. Do an experiment yourself. Get a magazine and place a box of matches or something similar on it. Slowly tilt the magazine until the matchbox begins to move. Notice how it starts with a jerk and then accelerates smoothly before dropping off the end of the magazine. Now do the same thing again but before the matchbox slides off the magazine tip the magazine back towards the horizontal. The matchbox jerks to a halt almost immediately.

Now imagine this. The ground beneath your feet instantly begins to move to your left at a speed of five or six miles per hour. Many buildings collapse, there is immense damage etc. Lets say you are 'lucky' and you survive this.

Over the next eight hours or so the wind is always coming from the same direction and getting stronger and stronger (in fact you are accelerating to 150MPH relative to the atmosphere!)until they blow so hard you cannot stand up. The air temperature is getting hotter and hotter until you can hardly stand it, the ground beneath your feet is hot, close to 70 degrees perhaps above boiling in places where the earths crust is thin.

WHAM! Now the ground beneath your feet stops and you find yourself and everything else that is not securely fixed to the earth is moving at 150MPH relative to the surface. Let us assume you are 'lucky' again and hit a 40 meter long stack of mattresses somebody has carelessly left stacked against the side of a low incredibly strong building that is still standing.

Now here comes the ocean moving at 150MPH - a wall of water several miles high washes up to 50 miles inland. Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur on a global scale loading the upper atmosphere with dust. What crops are left fail and the earth mercifully begins to cool from its intolerable temperature. Hurricanes however are a weekly occurrance and it is windy and rainy all the time. The climate and weather system will take around five years to return to near normal. You are now 1100 miles North or South relative to the poles from where you started - it was only a small 10 degree slip!

Crustal Slippage is a bitch. Its why we need to keep a careful eye on these unexpected quakes like the Chile earthquake!