[ntp:questions] Result of Earth Quake speeds up earth?

Terje Mathisen "terje.mathisen at tmsw.no" at ntp.org
Tue Mar 15 13:06:31 UTC 2011


Karel Sandler wrote:
>
>
>> I hear in the Media that the earth quake sped the rotation of
>> the earth up..
>> Can anyone confirm this?
>
> The earth quake has accelerated Earth's spin, shortening the length of
> the day by 1.8 microseconds.
>
>> Does this mean that we will not need to 'insert leap seconds'
>> for a while, or does it mean that we will need to retract leap
>> seconds that have been added?
>
> The value 1.8 us is very small, but it adds up every day. However, this
> sum is comparable to the leap second only after several centuries. Thus,
> such a change will be completely lost on the background of other
> influences.

Right:

1-2 us/day means ~500 us/year, so a single additional leap second every 
2000 years.

Since we used to have leap seconds every 1.5 years, then didn't have any 
at all for several years, this latest change is indeed lost in the noise.

Terje

-- 
- <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"




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