Quake Changes Earth's Rotation, Moves Islands

kernel panic attack writes "This week's deadly Asian Quake and Tsunami may have been so powerful, that it changed the rate of Earth's rotation. In a Reuters article, a NASA geophysicist theorizes that the quake compacted the Earth enough to speed up the planet's rotation by 3 microseconds. A second article says the quake moved undersea tectonic plates by up to 98 feet, shifting islands near Sumatra out to sea an unknown distance. Also, a USGS team wants images from commercial satellite operators to help pinpoint coastline damage. Lastly, an interesting article from the Australian Spaceguard Survey about the need for a Tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean. The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves." The current estimated death toll is now nearly 70,000; Amazon and Google, among others, have added front-page links to simplify donating to the disaster relief effort.

Apple Too

[ack154]

Probably not as much traffic as Amazon or Google, but Apple [apple.com] also has also modified their front page to offer multiple relief links. Even the four boxes at the bottom have been changed to different organizations.

Re:Apple Too

[TopShelf]

Don't know why they couldn't put the link in the article summary, but the Amazon donation link is in the sig below:

Amazon Donation...

[uptownguy]

I don't have a credit card but I'm sitting on a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate that someone gave me. I was hoping to be able to use THAT to make a $25 donation to the American Red Cross (Or, frankly, ANY organization providing relief!) through Amazon.com. After some searching I can't find any way to do it...

So I'm going to use Slashdot to see if I can do the next best thing: I'm willing to give my validation code for a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate to anyone who is willing to MAKE a $25 donation. Se

Re:Amazon's donation page

[TopShelf]

I'm looking into that. According to Amazon, they dock 2.9% + 30 cents, which is roughly equivalent to credit-card fees that agencies would face anyway. I'm surfing for further info, and if you're right, I'll change my sig...

100% goes straight to the Red Cross

[Schlemphfer]

It says right on Amazon's front page, "100% of your donation will go to the American Red Cross."

So it looks like Amazon.com is not only giving this front-page billing, they are also personally paying the credit card transaction fee, in effect losing at least a couple pennies for each dollar contributed.

In other words, they can't be faulted one iota.

Re:100% goes straight to the Red Cross

[snorklewacker]

As I recall, the Red Cross is sitting on a huge pile of cash for 9/11 victims because they don't want to make them millionaires and the government said they can't use the money for relief efforts that aren't 9/11 related.

I doubt this -- the Red Cross has never earmarked funds for specific disasters before, refuses to do so now, and the government has absolutely zero power to tell the Red Cross what it can do with its own funds. They are a private agency, and they are absolutely fanatical about their independence.

The Red Cross has also never paid out directly to victims. The only direct assistance they do give is in the form of vouchers for food, clothing, shelter, and related items.

So you don't recall anything except what some other very wrong person made up or just repeated from some other mistaken or lying individual.

Re:Apple Too

[stupidfoo]

F'en stingy Americans! How dare you raise millions and millions of dollars privately!?! Clearly your taxes are too low!

Re:Apple Too

[EinarH]

With the danger of sounding like a depreciative bitch I'm willing to play the devils advocate and say that "this whole donate privatly a few bucks on some page" is, allthough good, as significant as a mouse peeing in the ocean to rasie the level.

Private donatins and charity and campaigns like this are the kind of feel-good actions that do very little overall. They are usualy short-term campaigns tha collect a few millions than fade into obscurity within a week and bring little long term benefit.
Fast forward a week or two. Amazon may have collected $5-10 million then everyone forgets about the whole deal. It's a perfect setup. Those that give a few bucks get the feeling that they contributed "enough", some people got some help, politicans can take the populistic "sure we are helping through private aid", the private NGOs get they paycheck and got the chance to help _some_ and off couse promote their agenda. And everyone in the western world is happy.

So yes I think private charity like this is insignificant comapred to large initiatives, long term work and state based aid.

So yes I do think Americans are stingy, together with the rest of the rich world. I know because I'm a stingy person myself on this area*. But then again I'm honest enough to admit it.

*For the record I gave less than $100 to the Red Cross yesterday. Should/Could have given much more.

Re:Apple Too

[nathanh]

*For the record I gave less than $100 to the Red Cross yesterday. Should/Could have given much more.

If every American gave as much as you did then you'd have collectively raised $30 billion for the relief effort. The UN is estimating they'll only need $5 billion in total.

The problem isn't with you, so don't feel guilty. The problem is with the billions of people worldwide who will donate nothing.

At the risk of sounding socialist (I'm sure I just caused a few Americans to faint from shock) this is

GODDAMMIT

[YrWrstNtmr]

This is not an international dick-waving contest to see who can 'contribute' the most. How about we just help them, OK?

Re:Apple Too

[kaustik]

I bet any one of the people receiving any sort of benefit from this (food, shelter, medical attention) would beg to differ.

Re:Apple Too

[rcamera]

as of now, amazon claims to have collected $2,120,581.09. the us federal government pledged $35 million [bloomberg.com] while the entire eu pledged $4 million [bergen.com]. overall, nations pledged "at least $102 million" (see first link). amazon alone has collected over 50% of the eu's pledge and 2% of total aid pledged by all nations. i wonder what the red cross has collected (without amazon), as well as unicef, cidi, etc. i imagine that compared to the $102 million, private collections are NOT insignificant.

if you think that immed

Re:Apple Too

[bruthasj]

No more Food, I mean Oil, uh, I mean Kickbacks, for you Kofi!

Re:Let's not make fun..

[Atzanteol]

Actually, the Red Cross has been asking for cash more than goods. It's quicker and easier to ship money (done electronicaly) and they can buy the goods closer to the catastrophe. It costs them money to ship out clothing et al, and it's slower.

Re:Let's not make fun..

[tntguy]

If you do want to help, donate clothing/water purifiers like Brita more than cash. They atleast go the victims directly.

DO NOT DO THIS!!! Donate cash. Legitimate organizations can spend your money far better than you can. They'll have (access to) locals who will know what's needed. The $10 you spend on a filtered water pitcher (which won't help with bacteria) could go toward a real purifier that several people could use.

Things are cheaper over there, and they'll usually negotiate deals on bulk purchas

Re:Let's not make fun..

[Eric S. Smith]

A Brita bought here is cheaper than a water purifier bought in Madras

...and will do no good. Brita filters, as anyone who's read the label knows, are only good for water that is already safe to drink.

Which goes to the point under discussion: send money to those who know what to do with it.

Re:Let's not make fun..

[EnronHaliburton2004]

If you do want to help, donate clothing/water purifiers like Brita more than cash. They atleast go the victims directly.

Your post is an excellent example of why you should donate cash to organizations who have a good idea what the immediate needs are, rather then donate goods when you don't understand what the problem is.

People have immediate needs for food, medicine and clean drinking drinking water. Clothing comes afterwards. Brita filters are useless against raw sewage, bad chemicals from the flooded

Re:Let's not make fun..

[Anonymous Coward]

one of, if not the most generous nation(s) on the planet (yes, even per capita).

Not any more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000102&si d=ash4iKmCSW6Y&refer=uk [bloomberg.com]

And from http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html [salon.com]:

U.S. is the world's Scrooge

"The United States is not stingy," Colin Powell said on CNN this morning. "We are the greatest contributor to international relief efforts in the world."

Powell was responding to comments yesterday by Jan Egeland, the United Nation's em

Re:Let's not make fun..

[stupidfoo]

Awww... poor little eurotrash. You seem to think that the only organization fit to distribute funds are governmental orgs and that the only funds that count are ones that are gathered through coercion (taxes).

Noticeably absent from the anti-american salon article are numbers for private charitable giving (which dwarf any country no matter how you slice - Hell, between 1992 and 1998 the US sent almost $2.9 billion in PRIVATE AID to CUBA!) and US military expenditures (no, we're not discussing Iraq) that are solely for humanitarian purposes.

We're moving a f'en carrier group into the region for support and search and rescue, you think that's cheap?

With 300 million people you donated ODA $6.9 billion in foreign aid in 1997.

http://www.usaid.gov/fani/ch06/privateaid.htm [usaid.gov]
The actual total of official development assistance and private giving was $44.5 billion, or 0.45 percent of U.S. gross national income - and that still doesn't account for military humanitarian spending

LOL: In 2000 U.S. universities and colleges gave more to developing countries in foreign scholarships than Australia, Belgium, Norway, Spain, and Switzerland each gave in ODA.

What were you saying again?

And, btw, the current numbers for ODA funding are:
Australia - $1.2 Billion [oecd.org]
France - $7.3 Billion [oecd.org]
US - $16.2 Billion [oecd.org] (a 23% increase over last year under the evil Bushilter!)

Re:Let's not make fun..

[valmont]

All statistics you quote are government-donated funds. They do not take into account donations made from the private sector, companies and individuals. If you take those into account, America dwarfs everyone and leaves France far behind. Some countries tax their citizens more than others. Having grown-up in France, i know for a fact from both my parents that companies and individuals get taxed into oblivion.

Having built my professional life in America, I know I can easily donate to relief organizations without straining my budget too much, and most of the time, write it off on my U.S. taxes, which means money that would otherwise go to the U.S. government now goes to Red Cross, with Uncle Sam's benediction.

In the end, what matters is how much money relief organizations get, and which countries it's coming from. Let's see who's ahead in terms of income percentage.

I gave $250 to redcross via amazon as soon as it went up.

We're not martyrs. We're setting the record straight. And we're here to help.

Salon is here to slander and make sensationalistic headlines. That's what sells. Use grains of salt and don't take everything you read at face value, and most certainly not anything I write. Do your own research.

Re:Stingy Americans? Here's One...

[nathanh]

When you are attacked, you defend. When attacked by someone who is clearly an idiot, facts and numbers sometime help.

An anonymous coward claiming to have a half-million dollar income is now a fact? Get real! I think the odds are rather good that was simply an anonymous liar.

I provided the facts and figures earlier. The US donates less per person than France, and significantly less in total than just the Scandanavian countries.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it. Idiot, indeed. You just don't like

Re:Stingy Americans? Here's One...

[nathanh]

"I provided the facts and figures earlier."

Which were old, dated, and just plain wrong.

Old and dated mean the same thing, so you repeat yourself. I wrote the years anyway so there was no chance for confusion. Your accusation of "just plain wrong" is simply a lie. The figures are not wrong. You just don't like the way I presented them because you agree that the US ODA figures are terrible and you want to discuss US private donations instead. Accusing my figures of being "just plain wrong" is dishones

Re:Stingy Americans? Here's One...

[JabberWokky]

There is a simple difference. The United States is not a socialist country, and indeed, most of the population dislikes socialism. Thus there are large private organizations (like the American Red Cross) and both individual and corporate donations to any disaster that far exceed what the government can do.

That is the preferred way for the United States. It's different than how some other countries handle it, but the numbers, when compared on a "total assistance" basis, rather than being skewed, are cert

Rotation

[Manan Shah]

I would not think a quake, even of this magnitude could have that much effect on rotation. Then again, the speculation is that there could never be enough energy for a 10.0 quake, so 9.0 is pretty high up on the list. It is impossible to comprehend, but an 8.6 earthquake has enough energy to equal 60,000 hydrogen bombs. Amazing.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Rotation

[Squareball]

Great now we'll have Leap-Second

Re:Rotation

[Issue9mm]

We already have leap seconds: http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/leapsec.html

-9mm-

Re:Rotation

[BridgeBum]

We already do. [navy.mil] The first one was in 1972.

Re:Rotation

[nwbvt]

Thing is that stuff like this is really not out of the ordinary. This was the largest quake in 40 years, that means a larger one happened 40 years ago. And there were 3 larger ones in the past 100 years. Now for a human being once in every 40 years is rare, but for the planet that is pretty routine. We are all brought up to believe that the Earth is this fragile thing in which the slightest alteration screws up the balance of nature, but that really is not the case. It is a constantly changing giant rock spinning around in space.

Now that doesn't mean that the quake can't have changes just because larger recent quakes didn't do anything. In fact we know that massive changes in the Earth have happened before in the more distant past, and I seriously doubt they were from SUVs polluting too much, so it is perfectly possible that there is something special about this quake (other than just its magnitude) that will cause major changes.

Re:Rotation

[b!arg]

You are so right. The Earth is far from fragile. I've always had problems with people trying to "Save the Earth." What they are trying to do is Save the Humans. The Earth will be around LOOOONG after we are, but it will probably not be inhabitable by humans as we are today. Since our brief view of Earth during our lifetime makes us see it as a static thing (i.e. it is always rainy in Seattle and Northern Africa will always be a desert), it is incredibly dynamic. This has been one of the scariest thing

Re:Rotation

[nwbvt]

Discussing the geological ramifications of a large earthquake is belittling the tragedy it caused? What would you do, call it an Act of God and never speak of it again?

And I hardly see anything in that post that justifies SUVs in there, in fact the only mention of SUVs was a claim that they did not cause the major changes in the Earth's climate millions of years ago. If thats what you call a justification, you have serious problems.

Re:Rotation

[BengalsUF]

Actually the increase in rotation was not caused by any "push", but because one fault slipping under another pulled more mass towards the center of the Earth. Being a body in rotation, the more compact it is, the faster it will spin.

Re:Rotation

[DunbarTheInept]

Isn't the mass of earth still the same?

When a figure skater doing a spin pulls her arms in toward herself to speed up, her mass is the same also, but it still works. This is the same principle.

Linear momentum depends just on the mass. Angular momentum depends both on the mass and on the radius of that mass.

Re:Rotation

[tomjen]

acording to ajazeera it now takes the earth 3 miliseconds less for a full rotation.

read the article here [aljazeera.net]

Re:Wobble

[oojah]

The earth orbits the sun. Imagine there is an axis through the centre of the sun around which the earth is orbiting the sun.

The earth also rotates. The axis of rotation of the earth does not point in the same direction as the axis of the orbit. This is why we say that the earth is tilted.

The tilt keeps pointing in the same direction throughout the year, ignoring the fact that it wobbles.

This means that in summer, the axis in your hemisphere will be pointing towards the sun. The sun will be high in the sk

It's all about angular momentum

[PhysicsGenius]

Angular momentum is conserved and is calculated by L = Iw where I is the rotational inertia, w is the angular velocity and L is the constant product. So if I goes up (and I will show in a minute how that happens), w must go down.

I, the rotational inertia, is calculated different ways for different geometries. A long stick held by the end has a larger I than the same stick held by the center, for instance. Another example is a sphere, like the Earth, rotating on an axis. If it suddenly puts out a long arm, that's going to increase its rotation inertia considerably, decreasing its angular velocity. Lifting up a whole region by a few inches could easily do that.

Re:It's all about angular momentum

[Naikrovek]

yes. but relative to a big chunk of land, new york weighs little, and while it would slow the earth down, it is probably an immeasureable amount.

still, i'm going to lose some weight, so i can help the earth pick back up some spin.

Re:It's all about angular momentum

[mforbes]

There was a Q&A in the LastWord section of New Scientist magazine about this a few months ago. The gist of the answer was that, for each tall building me construct, we also remove just as much matter from beneath the surface (mining activities, etc)... so the net result is zero, or close enough to zero that it's discountable.

Re:It's all about angular momentum

[Kjella]

or close enough to zero that it's discountable.

Yes, it is neglectable. AFAIK one of the few works of man that have changed the angular momentum to some degree are the great dams, e.g. the Hoover dam. Keeping all that water at an higher altitude matters a lot more than a few skyscrapers.

Of course, that too pales in comparison to an earthquake, which moves the tectonic plates themselves. Falling or raising plates moves thousands of meters of rock up and down, creating mountains and oceans. Anything man has built is neglectable compared to that.

Kjella

Re:Rotation (will have no long term effect!)

[otisg]

Actually, the 3 microsecond effect (the Earth is now spinning a bit faster, shortening our day by about 3 microseconds) will have no long term effect. Our Moon has the drag effect on Earth anyway, continuously prolonging our days - about 15 microseconds per year.

Aha, here is a bit about that from Wikipedia[1]:

"The moment of inertia of Earth decreased a bit due to the earthquake. Because the angular momentum is conserved, this results in an increase of the angular velocity of Earth's rotation. In other words, the earthquake shortened the length of a day by as much as 3 s. However, due to tidal effects of the Moon, the Earth's rotation slows by 15 s per year. So any rotation speedup due to the earthquake will have no long-lasting effect at all."

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_ear thquake

What is the impact?

[zeux]

it changed the rate of Earth's rotation. In a Reuters article, a NASA geophysicist theorizes that the quake compacted the Earth enough to speed up the planet's rotation by 3 microseconds

What will be the impact of this on geostationnary satellites?
On the measuring of time?
On the GPS?

Re:What is the impact?

[khrtt]

According to the article, the impact is 3 microseconds/day.

Re:What is the impact?

[Soft]

What will be the impact of this on geostationnary satellites?

No more than usual perturbations, I suppose: geostationary satellites already tend to drift a little and need stationkeeping.

On the measuring of time?

None. The second is defined relative to quantum levels in the caesium atom, that won't change. As for keeping up with the calendar, the Earth's rotation already has small variations; since 3 microseconds is roughly 1/300 second, we might have to subtract a leap second next July or December. (E.g. straight from 2005-12-31/23:59:58 to 2006-01-01/0:00:00 UTC.)

On the GPS?

Don't know, but don't think the resolution is that precise.

Re:What is the impact?

[Epistax]

On the GPS?

You press the degauss button. It'll look funny for a few seconds but then it'll click and be fine.

3 microseconds per _what_?

[WillerZ]

Article is useless, and indeed meaningless without the _what_ filled in...

Phil

Re:3 microseconds per _what_?

[Mz6]

Well.. that earth rotates once every 24 hours right? So, by the article, that means that the day is shortened by 3 microseconds.

Equalizes out

[randomErr]

"a NASA geophysicist theorizes that the quake compacted the Earth enough to speed up the planet's rotation by 3 microseconds."

Thats alright, it all works out in the end. You see everytime we launch a explortion vehicle we loose a nanoscopic amount of rotation speed.

Over what time?

[GeekLife.com]

"Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, theorized that a shift of mass toward the Earth's center during the quake on Sunday caused the planet to spin 3 microseconds, or 3 millionths of a second, faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis."

3 millionths of a second faster...per year? Per day? Per second? It would seem that that would be critical information left out of this and all other articles I've seen mentioning this change.

Re:Over what time?

[arkanes]

You know what one rotation of the earth is called, right? One of those is 3 microseconds faster.

Re:Over what time?

[Physics Dude]

You know what one rotation of the earth is called, right? One of those is 3 microseconds faster.

Which would be great if the article had actually said that the 3 milliseconds was per rotation (which it didn't).

As was mentioned yesterday

[AbbyNormal]

the wiki is here [wikipedia.org] and some amazing videos are here [contemporaryinsanity.org]

Absolutely amazing, the death-toll is reaching 69,000. I don't mean to be pessimistic, but would a warning system really have helped, though? I mean there are accounts of entire villages just being swept out to sea. Any life, obviously, is worth saving, but in the future I wonder how you could warn villages without power/communication systems. Very tragic.

Re:As was mentioned yesterday

[slutdot]

You'd think there would be some sort of international warning system for events like this but apparently there isn't. According to this article [www.ctv.ca], U.S. scientists tried to reach contacts in the reach but since there is no warning system in place, they couldn't let anyone know what was happening.

Re:As was mentioned yesterday

[metlin]

Well, I'm writing this from Chennai/Madras which was hit quite badly (over 3000+ folks were killed from areas here and around).

The problem is that this region has never seen Tsunamis before, and most people were just curious to see what the hell was happening. That made it only worse - a lot of them were morning walkers who were wondering what's up with the sea.

If erudite urban folks are this naive, what can you expect off villagers? Actually, there is a story making the rounds of a guy from Singapore who called up his village and warned them about this, and they all moved to safety and nobody in the village was affected.

The problem is that, it is not enough if you had a warning system -- you would need to know what to do with it. It's not sufficient to warn people, you need to tell them where to go and what to do, too.

Re:Never?

[tompaulco]

Not since the 1800s, when the hall of records was mysteriously swept away.

Re:As was mentioned yesterday

[lpangelrob2]

The best prevention is education -- a scientist on a news channel in the U.S. yesterday said that when the sea recedes like it did before Sunday's tsunami, you have between 5-10 minutes to run the opposite direction. From most accounts, few did.

It is noted that Sumatra was devastated by the 9.0 earthquake, followed twenty minutes later by the worst of the tsunami. In addition, parts of the Indian subcontinent were flooded up to several miles inland, making the visual warning inadequate. On the hillier isla

Indian ocean isnt the only place one is needed

[night_flyer]

Scientist warns of Atlantic tidal wave

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5652141/ [msn.com]

Re:Indian ocean isnt the only place one is needed

[arivanov]

Fsck, here went my moderation.

I have been on that island (it is worth visiting while it lasts). Nearly killed myself aquaplaning in a tropical rainstorm on a road with 400+ meter cliff going into the sea on the right and 400+ cliff going up towards the volcano in question on the left.

Anyway, on subject:

It has a US Geological Survey run GPS station network every several hundred meters or so in some places do detect any movement and try to predict the next eruption. There will be a fair warning on this one. It is a question if anyone will dare to use that warning wisely which I doubt.

That is the good bit.

The bad bit is that compared to a worst case La Palma scenario the tsunami from 2004 Christmas earthquake will be a child's game in a puddle. The predicted worst case tsunami for La Palma is 800m at the start, 100+m at Marroco and Capo Verde, 30+m at Lisbon, Rio and the Caribean, 10+ m along the entire East Coast of the US including New York and Ireland and 5+ at the South coast of the UK. The death toll if there will be no evacuation will be in the tens of millions if not hundreds. That is the worst case scenario which is if it slides the same way it slid 1+ million years ago when the current north caldera has formed (it is the largest volcanic caldera formed by a landslide on the planet - 30km+ diameter). Even if it is a fraction of that it is still really scary.

Just to make things worse is that current models are that a landslide is likely to follow one of the next 3-5 eruptions and it erupts every 20 years on average.

And worst part is that it has not erupted for nearly 33 years now so the next eruption is likely to be bigger then usual.

Re:Atlantic Ocean -vs- Pacific Ocean

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortuantely most people just don't look at the two oceans, especially their underwater attributes.

Both the Pacific and Indian Oceans have very small if non existant shelves. There is simply deep ocean and then land rising up very quickly.

The Atlantic Ocean has a large shelf that protrudes well out to sea on the east coast of the US. This can significantly reduce the effects of Tsunamis (which are the displacemnt of water). Think of it this way, the Tsunami will "break" hundreds of miles out to sea

Re:Atlantic Ocean -vs- Pacific Ocean

[arivanov]

You have a point to some extent. But you should also make your research properly. It is not uninterrupted contiguous barrier. It has everything from shallow banks to deep gorges that go all the way to the shore. While the banks will protect the shore, the average depth is deep enough for the wave to reach the shore in plenty of places and actually get focused by the gorges in others to way above the 10m average.

Re:Indian ocean isnt the only place one is needed

[sunspot42]

How do you think people would feel if there was a nuke parked beside any volcano, fault line, etc? And also one that had to be detonated instantly, without human oversight and control?

Clearly, this is a job for Skynet!

slowing rotation

[justforaday]

I seem to remember seeing something a few months ago about the earth's rotation slowing a bit -- something that the scientists can't seem to explain. Any chance this sort of thing could be related or a partial explanation?

Micro gravity

[Anonymous Coward]

The Earth is modeled in Physics classes as if the density is consistent throughout, so that they use a simplistic geocentric model as if all of the mass were at the center. This is not how The Earth is actually configured. For doing satelites one must models The Earth with micro-gravity elements, where masses are charted and denser areas have different effects based upon their sizes and locations. It is well known, for example, that under the South Atlantic Ocean there is a larger force of gravity.

And so if there were a shift in some dense part of the mantle or the core where it went farther into The Earth (or farther away) it would change the rotational speed because of the conservation of angular momentum. Think of a child spinning on a swing. When the child pulls in his arms, the child spins faster. When the child puts her arms out, she spins slower. Same with The Earth.

Interesting.

[jellomizer]

It is interesting the Quake speeds up the earths rotation. Because there are factors like the moon that actually slow down the earths rotation. I don't know the rates of average earthquake will speed up the earths rotation vs. the rate the gravitional effect of the moon slows the rotation. So I guess in some ways earth quakes are a good thing in the long term. Because the earth having a 672 hour day would probably be more desasterious to life.

Re:Interesting.

[n0mad6]

With the case of the moon, the Earth's rotation is slowed down enough such that on average, the day is lengthened by 15 microseconds every year. At the same time, the moon gets 38 mm further from the Earth over the same period. This is a result of the two bodies being tidally locked (i.e., having synchronized rotations such that one side of the moon is always facing the Earth).

UTC

[espo812]

compacted the Earth enough to speed up the planet's rotation by 3 microseconds

Don't forget to adjust your clocks [navy.mil].

Nuclear power station affected

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a nuclear power station in Kalpakkam, India on the coastline that got hit by the Tsunami. The reactor was shutdown automatically. There was some flooding in the unit. The authorites claim it is safe. I wonder if these nuclear power station has any safegaurds for earthquacks.

More information about earthquakes

[Manan Shah]

A 10.0 earthquake has energy equivilant 1,000,000,000,000 tons of TNT. It would create a fault that circles the earth. A 12.0 on the other hand, with 160,000,000,000,000 tons of tnt energy, would break the hearth in half. Comparatively, the Northridge, CA quake of 1994 was "only" equal to 5,000,000 tons of emergy.

Just the SCOPE

[Badgerman]

It's still hard to wrap my mind around the extent of the disaster.

It also is amazing just how much information we have at our fingertips from cell phones, cameras, the internet, and more. Had this happened twenty years ago, the sense of it would be different.

It's amazing seeing the global impact, and being aware of the global impact. The world is much smaller these days.

I am also heartened to see how the internet has given people information on how to help out. That, too, is different than what we would have faced twenty years ago. Let's hope it makes a difference.

3 microseconds less?

[Woogiemonger]

As if there wasn't too little time in the day already.

Donate some money!

[immerrath]

I submitted a story with a link to a CNN [cnn.com] page that lists organizations accepting aid for the Tsunami/Quake hit people, but it got rejected.

I myself donated $500 to AmeriCares [americares.org] which seems to be a fairly reputable charity, and I'm only a poor graduate student.

Those of you who are well off enough, please, donate as much as you can to your favorite charity.

I quote John Donne [wikipedia.org]:

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Re:Donate some money!

[dmccarty]

No man is an island [...]

But if one were, he'd be about 100 feet farther away now.

tsunami videos also on edonkey

[tosspot1]

Anyone looking for the tsunami videos can also now find them on edonkey/emule:
tsunami_asia_261204_patong_beach___from_contempora ryinsanity.org.wmv [ed2k]
tsunami_asia_261204_phuket___from_contemporaryinsa nity.org.wmv [ed2k]
tsunami_asia_261204_srilanka___from_contemporaryin sanity.org.wmv [ed2k]
tsunami_asia_261204_zeebeving___from_contemporaryi nsanity.org.avi [ed2k]

mass hysteria setting in...

[AviLazar]

because now i have to reset my watch to account for the correct time. DAMN YOU!!! DAMN YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!

weather changes rotation 1000 times more

[peter303]

The length of a day fluctuates two milliseconds, [iers.org] or a thousand times more, over the course of a year. Most of this attributed to the annual pattern of ocean storms.

Sensationalist Title

[kryzx]

Come on now, is it really good journalism to put the title "Quake Changes Earth's Rotation, Moves Islands" on this, because some dork theorizes that the quake may have accelerated the Earth's rotation, but the change would be too small to measure? Please.

And speaking of poor journalism, has anyone else noticed that Fox News has the epicenter of the quake totally wrong? They put it down near the bottom of Sumatra. I saw this on the first day and discounted it as early guesswork, but then I just saw it again last night (12/28), same graphic. I guess they just don't care.

Satellite Images

[KrackHouse]

The guys over at India's department of Space, National Remote Sensing Agency posted a link to an 8MB powerpoint slide of satellite images of the affected areas which effectively crippled their server due to the demand. Some of us readers over at Tsunamihelp.blogspot.com mananged to get some mirrors up here [hariraj.com] and here. [kuntes.net] I also created a .torrent which includes the images(in a PowerPoint presentation) as well as a bunch of footage of the tsunami that has been going around bringing down servers. Grab the .Torrent [downhillbattle.org]. Please grab the .torrent unless you're really lazy, the other mirrors will probably be tried first by those who really need the data. More seeders needed for that .torrent, leave your BT clients running please.

Re:Satellite Images

[KrackHouse]

Wow, just tested it and I was getting over 400KBytes/second down. That's the first time I've seen a download that fast, thanks for seeding everybody. I'm compiling some more footage that I'm going to put in TsunamiTorrentV2. If anybody has suggestions for content that's not already included please post a comment on my blog [blogspot.com].

Another estimate and what that means for Satalites

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

Another estimate for the time change here.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-041 22 80221dec28,1,6119845.column

(some useless registration required). I quote from the article.
"Incredibly, the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck off Sumatra on Sunday morning caused a vertical displacement of so much material that the rotation period of the Earth has been permanently altered. By a tiny but measurable amount, the Earth is now rotating more quickly on its axis, and the 24-hour day is now one ten-thousandth second shorter.That's the result of calculations based on preliminary data made by Oak Park astronomer Dr. Leslie M. Golden. It's analogous to the increase in rotational speed that a twirling ice skater experiences when he or she draws in their arms. It is estimated that during the Sumatran quake, a block of material roughly 600 miles in length and 100 miles in width fell 30 feet closer to the Earth's axis of rotation. The planet has responded by rotating more rapidly, albeit ever so slightly, and our 24-hour days are now one ten-thousandth second shorter." by Tom Skilling.

If it is one ten-thousandth of a second then it works out to have more effect.

Doing the math for 1/10,000 of a sec/day:

so 10,000 days = 1 second

10000/365 = 27.39 years

So in 27.39 years we loose a second.

Diameter of earth 12,756 km or circumference 24,902 mi or 131,482,560 ft (appox at equator)

One second of the day means a radial distance of

24hr * 60 min *60 sec = 86400 seconds /day

131,482,560 (feet / day) / 86400 (sec/day) = 1521.79 feet/sec

at the equator (old 24 hour day)
or is what the eath turns in one second

or if there is change of 1521.79 feet of alignment in 27.39 years. or 55.56 feet / year.
or:

55.56 (feet/yr) * 12 in/foot = 666.72in/yr(bad omen here)

or 666.72 (in/year) / 365 days (aprox) = 1.8 in /day difference.

55.56 (feet /year) / 12 months = 4.63 (ft/month)

This is a different estimate than Nasas but might be thought of as an upper bound until things
can be calculated more precisely.

Satelite's orbits will not change their period because of the change in the earths rotational speed. Geosynchronous satalites will slip out of synchronisity and need to use fuel to change their orbits, reducing their effective life as we have no way of replenishing fuel in geosynchronous orbit (around 22k miles out I think).

This will be devistating for GPS and will require immediate upgrades/repossitioning to those systems.

Can you imagine a year from now a precision guided missle landing 55 feet to the left. and each day
an additional 55 feet more. Frightning. I image the military has stopped using GPS guided weapons
until that can be corrected.

Now if you correct those numbers for the Nasa estimate.

3/100,000 instead of 1/10,000 then the

or 3,000,000 days to get one second then.

or 8219 years

1521.79 (ft/sec) / 8319 (years/sec) =.1829 (ft/year) .1829 ft * 12 inches = 2.195 in/year

much less of an adjustment or a threat to satelite's positions or positioning satelites.

(check the math, who knows if I did it right)

Just an intellectual exercise to assess the effect. Enjoy

Re:Another estimate and what that means for Satali

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

Sorry refered to 55 ft/day that is per/year but 4.63 ft month or about 1.8in/ day. So you have a month or two to move from next to ground zero to not be mistaken for a terroist bomb factory by a GPS weapon (if the GPS system is not updated).

Amazon waiving normal honor system fees

[Urgo]

Normally when a person or entity uses the amazon honor system for donations/payments amazon takes a nice cut of the pie. I emailed them today to check if they did the same thing for the disaster relief and apparently they aren't!

I included both emails below:

TO: Amazon
FROM: Urgo
I have a question about the disaster relief donation page that you have setup on amazon.com. I know normally with the amazon honor system amazon gets a cut of all the donations. Is amazon taking a cut of the money in this case or is all of the money people donate going right to the red cross?

FROM: Amazon
TO: Urgo
Thanks for writing to us at Amazon.com.

Please rest assured that all the donated money will go to the Red Cross to help victims of tragedies in southern Asia, India, and Africa.

Please know that Amazon.com is waiving its usual fees.

Front Page Link?

[TrevorB]

Amazon and Google, among others, have added front-page links to simplify donating to the disaster relief effort.

Perhaps Slashdot could do the same? After all, 80,000 dead and counting definately counds as "Stuff that matters."

Run, Run, As if your life depended on it.

[chris_sawtell]

Why is it that so many people did not know that if the sea suddenly goes out very fast, it's going to come back again even faster.

So if that ever happens to you, don't hang about, run inland as fast as your little legs will carry you. You life depends on it.

Slashdot moderators please help get that message out, you will save lives.

Re:Makes me wonder

[tage]

Earthquakes can't change the Earth's orbit anymore than you can fly by pulling your hair upwards.

Re:Makes me wonder

[Timesprout]

Only a fool would try to fly by pulling their hair upwards. Everyone knows you have to throw yourself at the ground and miss to fly.

Re:Makes me wonder

[Enigma_Man]

You're right. Earthquakes didn't change the earth's orbit, they changed the earth's rate of rotation, which is a completely different animal.

-Jesse

Re:Makes me wonder

[tage]

...oh, and earthquakes certainly don't change the orbits of asteroids.

Re:Donations

[rednip]

I'm ashamed to be an American.

As you should be, you are clearly distorting the facts, and misusing a tradegy for you own purposes in a manner that is worthy of a Bush staffer. $35 million dollars is just in discressionary funds, Congress will meet shorty to approve more money from our Federal government, and of course this doesn't include private charity.

I dislike bush more than most, but you 'sir' are living proof that being 'left' doesn't make you 'right'.

Re:Donations

[JInterest]

I'm ashamed to be an American. Call me a troll if you want, but these numbers are sickening.

I'm ashamed that you are an American too. Stop your pointless off-topic trolling. It is truly sickening.

Re:Donations

[Rathian]

What you're leaving out is the detail:
The U.S. GOVERNMENT will donate $35 million.

It's very likely more will be donated as time goes on. Already they have increased this from the initial $15M pledged on the day of the disaster. The size and scope of this is still coming in. One of the things the U.S. Government has already done was to send three P3 Orions to better survey and asses the damage so we'll know what is needed and how much.

Also, that is completely ignoring/not counting donations from the private sector (i.e. You, me, companies) and food donations. I would guess that also doesn't count costs to the U.S. Government for the costs of the manpower we are sending to that area to aid relief efforts.

Me, I'm proud to be an American. In spite of what others may say, our nation is full of compassionate and caring people.

Re:Donations

[nwbvt]

You are not very good with numbers, are you?

"$35000000 - amount committed to help victims
100000 - conservative death toll
= $350 - spent to aid each victim"

So all the money is going to aide the dead victims?

" $8,647,058 - spent to kill each Iraqi"

You do realize the purpose of war is not to kill as many people as we can.

So, you're saying...

[Rufus88]

...that you would have preferred that 420,000,000 Iraqis were killed, to bring the cost per kill down to a commensurate $350 level? I guess you'd really be complaining if only one Iraqi died in the whole war. After all, we'd have spent $147 Billion to kill that one Iraqi, right?

Well spotted.

[jotaeleemeese]

THe UK is donating 15 million dollars (after much pressure of the media and the general public).

This is the amount that football teams have paid for some top players in recent years:

Manchester United for Wayne Rooney: 54 million US$.
Manchester United for Rio Ferdinand: 58 million US$.
Real Madrid for David Beckham: 41 million US$.

Something is horribly wrong with this.

Re:Well spotted.

[ThinWhiteDuke]

Reuters [reuters.fr] says France gave 15m euros (20m$). You should switch to a channel that broadcasts news, not hate.

Yes, you are a troll.

[BurntHombre]

And how much money have you donated?

Re:Donations

[Ubergrendle]

I would suggest that many Americans would benefit from a more thorough study of history. Napoleon offers a good example -- you can't free people who don't want to be free, or who don't consider themselves captive to begin with.

It will take a decade to determine whether Iraqis were better off with Saddam vs the US 'liberation' effort. I'm cynically guesing the result will be a wash...

Re:Donations

[JJahn]

Freed from a dictator, and thrown into a brutal warzone with no safety, no infrastructure (water, sewer, power) worth speaking of, etc. We did more to destroy Iraq than to help it. Perhaps with a thorough plan, and some more international help, we could have removed Saddam without decimating the country.

Per Capita: Wrong metric

[Tackhead]

> > [derivation of $350 spent per tsunami victim snipped for brevity]
> >$147000000,000 - spent on war in Iraq
> > 17000 - rough number of Iraqis killed
> > = $8,647,058 - spent to kill each Iraqi
> >I'm ashamed to be an American. Call me a troll if you want, but these numbers are sickening.
>
>$147,000,000,000 - spent on war in Iraq
>25,000,000 - number of people freed from dictator
>= $5880 - spent to free an individual
> I'm proud to be an American. Call me a troll if you want, but at least I know my country _did_ something.

Suppose we drop a cheap ($10M) set of nukes across Baghdad and in doing so, kill 1,000,000 people.

$147,010,000,000 spent.
1,017,000 Iraqis dead.
24,000,000 Iraqis liberated.

That comes out to:
$1,445,526 - spent to kill each Iraqi, and
$61,204 - spent to free an individual.

In short, the nuclear annihilation of 1,000,000 civilians would cut the cost of each preventable civilian death by 85%, while simultaneously boosting per capita humanitarian spending per capita by 20%. And somehow both of you would regard this as an improvement?

I'm ashamed when Americans attempt to optimize the wrong metric. Call me a QA weenie if you want, but at least I know something about process engineering!

Re:India Plans Psunami alert system

[mcwop]

From the 12/29/04 WSJ Page B1

Bayu Pranata was sipping tea shortly after starting his 7am shift at the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency in West Sumatra, Indonesia, about 500 miles south of the quake's epicenter, when he was disturbed by a "tak, tak, tak" sound. It was so loud he thought mechanics had started working in the garage next door. Then he realized it was the pen on the seismograph. He hurriedly called the National Earthquake Center in Jakarta, but ended up spending more than an hour trying to con

Talk about a moronic post

[ThinWhiteDuke]

God!

Your post made me mad, really. I've had to make a serious effort to remind myself that I should not fall to easy generalizations. No, most Americans are not like you. Most Americans are actually decent and caring people.

Most Americans just happen to live in the same country as you. I don't even think that the proportion of selfish bastards is higher in the US than in other countries. It's just that, for some reason, selfish bastards are more vocal in the US than elsewhere.

It's OK now, the burst o

Re:NEIC: Why didn't you warn about the Tsunamis?

[Bombcar]

They did contact the State Department. The State Department also could not find contact information for disaster warnings.

My guess is that now they know who to contact, perhaps even for all countries in the world.