Chile earthquake
This heading shocked me when I read this in the science daily on March 2.
Most of us know the chile earthquake that happened on the 27th of Feb 2010. It was an 8.8 magnitude earthquake. After reading this article, I found it quite interesting and so I decided to write a reflection again about this article as I did before in the post below.
Just to give you some information about the article: It talked about a research scientist Richard Gross. He computed how Earth's rotation should have changed as a result of the Chile Earthquake. After he used a complex model, he and his fellow scientists calculated that the quake should have shortened the length of an Earth day by 1.26 microseconds, which is a millionth of a second. Then, this article gave us another detail. It said that the quake should have shifted the Earth's axis by 8cm, which was more than the 2004 massive earthquake that shifted the Earth's axis by 7cm only.
After these details, the article told us the reasons why the Chile Earthquake shifted the Earth's axis more than the 2004 earthquake which was stronger. This is the url for the article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100302084522.htm
After reading this article, I realised that earthquakes are very strong things. Before I even read this article, I did not even know that an earthquake could shift the earth's axis or shorten the length of each earth day. When they gave the explantion of why the 2004 earthquake did not shift the earth's axis as much as the chile earthquake even though it was weaker, I felt that science can also be a complicated thing. At the 2nd last line of the article, it said that Gross the scientist predicted that the chile's prediction of how much it shifted the earth's axis will change as data and the quake are further refined. Once I read this, I agreed because there is no real or confirmed answer in science. Just to give you an example: You cannot say that all living things need air. How would you know ? There could be a specie of an animal that has not been found yet and it may not need air the survive.
Written by: Ethan Teo
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