The Chilean earthquake may have shortened the length of days on Earth by shifting the planet’s axis by 8cm, a Nasa scientist has calculated.
Richard Gross, a geophysicist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has concluded the rotation of the Earth should have altered as a result of the 8.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Chile on Saturday.
It means the earthquake has probably shortened the length of a day by about 1.26 microseconds (a microsecond is one millionth of a second).
Mr Gross said the 9.1-magnitude Sumatran earthquake in 2004 has also shortened the length of day by 6.8 microseconds.