OT Earthquake

T

Trick

Joined
Mar 3, 2001
Messages
351
Fox news just said the earthquake changed the earths rotation or shifted its axis or something like that. Anyone heard that? I had the volume low and didn't catch it all. I just checked fox news online and don't see anything. I normally wouldn't post ot stuff here much but this kinda freaks me out. :( :eek:
 
Njarf!? :confused:
Sooo... people weren't too far off when they said that 2000 was to be the last day.

No earthquake has enough energy to shake the earth free of the gravitational pull of the sun. It takes tons of rocket fule to brake free of the Earth- now imagine the sun- about 100,000,000,000x the sized of Earth. That is allot more gravitational pull, and we need more energy as we are a larger mass. No worries mate ;) .
Hmmm... it would take an Earthquake about the size of 100 high yield fission bombs- Enough to level Earth.
 
I was working on the guard for my bowie and haven't been watching the news after I posted. (Real worried, huh? :D) I am pretty sure they said it shifted the axis. That would not be cool at all. I am hoping I heard wrong and one would think that if that happened it would be all over the place. I am going to keep watching to see if they say anymore. It's obvious you know a whole lot more than me but I swear they said something. You know, now that I think about it maybe they were talking about those plates that shifted? I don't know but it is freaky. :eek:
 
First, don't worry about it.

The axis of the Earth does change naturally, but imperceptably, all the while. It is already a long way off "square" anyway. It is that tilt that gives us summers and winters in fact.

Even an event such as the movement of the Earth's tectonic plates is so tiny on the global scale of things that it makes no difference. The Earth's crust is always on the move. Constantly. When I fly from London to the USA, the journey is about 2-1/2" further each year. That's because the American continental plate is still moving away to the West.

Think of the Earth's surface as being a very thin crust on a rice pudding, but with several separate areas of crust. They float around separately because of the convection currents of the hot rice pudding underneath. Where the crust of the rice pudding is thinnest is where the liquid underneath is rising, and then the "plates" of the crust spread out. The problem happens where two lumps of crust bump into each other or slide against each other. That happens all the time. The San Andreas fault in California is one of those places for example. That has moved a long way in the last thousand years alone. But it hasn't made any difference to the axis of the Earth. The movement is too small to make any difference. It would take a huge thump from an external force to do that! The whole of the Rocky Mountain range was created by the Pacific plate burrowing beneath the continental plate and pushing, and crumpling up its edge. That didn't change the Earth's axis. Now we are talking BIG movements, right?

Press the palms of your hands together as hard as you can. Then slide one hand against the other. It will suddenly jump a little way. That's the same as what these plates are doing when they move suddenly. Let them move little and often and there is no big deal, let the pressure build up and then suddently break, like your hands just did, and there is a shock. An earthquake, instead of a little tremor. But whether it is sudden, or in little movements, the total distance moved is always going to be the same.

And, those "little" movements (on the global scale of things) are not going to move the axis of the Earth. Well, perhaps a little over many, many millions of years.

If anyone wants to get serious about these things, then move out of California. There's much more danger there than little movements changing the axis of the Earth.

Rod
 
The sun's gravity has very little to do with the Earth's rotation, just about as much as the moon. This is called precession and it will pull the Earth's axis out of alignment every 25,800 years.

The Earth's axis changes all the time. The Earth is a big top spinning, any change in the atmosphere, water in the oceans or in plate tetonics has an effect on that spin. This creates an effect called Chandler's wobble. This wobble changes the axis every 14 months.

There are some that believe that the Chandler's wobble may cause the earthquakes in the first place.

Straight Dope
Ask a Space Scientist
 
You guys got to be some of the smartest people around! I don't think I have posted anything in the years I have been here that someone didn't have great answers to. You guys and gals rock! Thanks for the info. I just pictured the ice caps melting and a new ice age happening before I get good at making knives. :D I watched fox news almost all night and they never said anything else. I must have had the volume down too low and heard those voices in my head again. :eek:
 
Lords of legs.....oops....Light

thundarr.jpg
 
Hey conehead the librarian, watch out! Indian George is about to shoot you in the back of the head!!! Quick, throw that mokume ball full of relish to distract it. :eek:
 
My wife had read about something shifting. As far as I'm concerned it could go backwards and we could all get younger, even Don......
 
This place is a zoo! Here I was all fired up to 'splane how that snap between the plates might bump Chandler's wobble and that Joe aced me! Cripes, I'm just too old and slow. (Prey; they call old slow beings prey. :eek: But I have an atlatl, and I know how to use it!) Anyhow, I no longer navigate by the stars; too much city light. The compass in my car and my wife keep me on the straight and narrow path.

Seriously though, a lot of people are suffering deeply because of that silent violence our planet took in stride. It's a sad day; all this stuff we can't do anything about and still we go looking for trouble with our fellow humans. I don't get it.
 
They just had a report about it on the news. They said it affected the earths rotation, not too big a deal apparently (I didn't feel a thing :D)
They also said that the island of Sumatra MOVED a couple feet PERMANENTLY :eek: Hows that for big stuff? I can't even imagine being in an earthquake an having the ground get goofy on me, but how would ya like it to just slide on over a few feet and stay there?! The destruction has to be terrible :(
 
and still we go looking for trouble with our fellow humans. I don't get it.

Amen Dave
There are two days out of the year when I forget my dislike for the system, modern people and the general chaos around me.

Here we are two days away from Christmas and we have tens of thousands dead from natural disasters, the elections in Iraq in question, more bombings and a liberal dose of mans inhumanity to man. :grumpy:
 
Well, somethings got to be changing. The earthquake wasn't strong enough to throw us out of the sun's gravity, but it did change our orbit. Obviously change is happening on a planet wide scale- hopefully for the better. I don't know bout yall, but now seems like a good enough time to pray that things are changing for the better. Kinda sad that it took that much death to make me think about this. Change...
 
Actually, the moon is moving away from the earth at a pretty constant rate and eventually WILL leave Earth orbit. If you saw Neil DeGrasse Tyson's "Origins" series, the moon used to be much closer to the earth than it is today. I think it's something like 1/8" per year is the change.

Something only on the scale of a meteor impact would change the axis and/or rotation of the Earth. What is changing is the location of the magnetic poles, and the change is picking up speed annually and oddly in almost a straight line. Its theorized that the poles may actually reverse, and this has been documented to occur on regular intervals, in hundreds of thousands of years.

Anyway... the Earth's orbit is a constantly changing 3-dimensional oval, and that oval is not flat, it see-saws a bit. You should see how the sun orbits around the galaxy. The interesting thing is that we go thru the same part of the galaxy every 65 Million years, and, that there has also been a major extinction of life approximately every 65 to 120 million years. When did the dinosaurs die off? Oops.
 
the earthquake the other nite was a small tremor compared to the one in the same vicinity back in the late 1800s.

The tidal wave went AROUND Cape Horn and lapped onto Englands shores.


It sounded like a canon in Japan.

The dust cloud went around the world 3 times.........

there is a book written about it.

The governments of India and the surrounding area have little concern for the safety of the general population!!!! :(
It is a sad thing that there was no warning for so many people.
 
What you saw/heard was probably the statement that the earthquake shifted the position of the tip of Sumatra by about 100 feet.That was the amount that the plate "jumped" as it slid above the other plate.
SA

Don't start getting on the shift in the earths axis or IG will be out in his back yard every night trying to find the EXACT new position to point his blades to at quench.
 
I have a sister in Thailand that was 'off to a small island' for Christmas :eek: . My folks are away at an aunts, so I don't know what the situation is :rolleyes: . I don't have any bad feelings about it, so I'm pretty sure she is OK. If so, I hop eshe is helping out as she is a RSN (Registered State Nurse) in the UK. I dare say her help will be appreciated.
 
Rod Neep said:
Even an event such as the movement of the Earth's tectonic plates is so tiny on the global scale of things that it makes no difference. The Earth's crust is always on the move. Constantly. When I fly from London to the USA, the journey is about 2-1/2" further each year. That's because the American continental plate is still moving away to the West.

Rod
Click to expand...
I'd like to see that odometer :D

Matt Shade said:
They also said that the island of Sumatra MOVED a couple feet PERMANENTLY :eek: :(
Click to expand...

I'm thinking that 2' of sand got displaced on each side of the Island.. :rolleyes: :D

2 deg changes in 365 days I think?

and the moon when I was a kid was 93,000 miles from the earth and now it's over 100,000 miles I believe. That messes up the 1/8" per year thing I think :)
or I'm a lot older than I think I'm ..

you have to remember science is part fiction and part fact..
they maybe righter now than they use to be in yesteryears facts :rolleyes: :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top