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

unruh unruh at wormhole.physics.ubc.ca
Tue Mar 15 17:43:03 UTC 2011


On 2011-03-15, Chris H <ntp at archnetnz.com> wrote:
> Hello, 
> Firstly may I just say, my thoughts are with members of this list who
> are in Japan.
>
> Just a bit of an odd question...
> I hear in the Media that the earth quake sped the rotation of the earth
> up..
> Can anyone confirm this?
>
> 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?

What I recall is that it is 2us/day, which is say 800us/yr=
1s/millenium. Since leap seconds come at a rate of something like 1 leap
second per 3-4 years, thus "one less leap second per millenium" is not
going to make any noticable difference. Climate change will make a
vastly greater change (the ice goes from the poles to water at the equator,
slowing the earth's rotation).







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