JAPAN QUAKE MAY HAVE SHORTENED EARTH DAYS, MOVED AXIS

The March 11, magnitude 9.0 earthquake in Japan may have shortened the length of each Earth day and shifted its axis. But don't worry you won't notice the difference. Using a United States Geological Survey estimate for how the fault responsible for the earthquake slipped, research scientist Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Applied a complex model to perform a preliminary theoretical calculation of how the Japan earthquake the fifth largest since 1900 affected Earth's rotation. His calculations indicate that by changing the distribution of Earth's mass, the Japanese earthquake should have caused Earth to rotate a bit faster, shortening the length of the day by about 1.8 microseconds (a microsecond is one millionth of a second).

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