According to Richard Gross, a geophysicist based at NASA, the recent Japan Earthquake has apparently shortened the length of an Earth day by 1.8 microseconds. While this may not be much, the fact that it has moved enough mass to alter the rotational speed of the Earth is quite incredible. Now I’m no scientist and I’m sure that 1.8 microseconds is nothing in the large scale of things but it certainly puts into perspective the scale of the earthquake that hit Japan.

Along with shortening our day, it’s also shifted the island of Japan by about 8 feet out of place and has geographically altered the terrain enough to make geographers consider remapping parts of North Eastern Japan. As always our thoughts go out to the victims of the quake and tsunami.

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