8.8 hits Chile

[PvtRyan]

You mean on the first stream? I thought I saw it receding there just now.

Yeah, it went up, then down and now it's going up again. Shit's exciting!

It's definitely from the earthquake, it happens in mere minutes.

 

[PvtRyan]

It's coming back in now, and pretty fast too!

 

[Shakermaker]

Judging by the names, Hawaii was originally colonized by Klingons.

EDIT That Nip presenter on stream 1 is awesome.

 

[PvtRyan]

Apparently, scientists on Hawaii are mandated by the government to wear Hawaiian shirts.

 

[Shakermaker]

Apparently, scientists on Hawaii are mandated by the government to wear Hawaiian shirts.

The dude from the tsunami warning center just said that the wave oscillation was a lot less extreme than they expected. All clear hasn't been given yet though.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

Reading this thread was like waiting for a new game to come out.

 

[Warped]

Reading this thread was like waiting for a new game to come out.

i can make t-shirts if you want

 

[The Monkey]

That guy's neck is disturbingly long.

 

[GreatEmperor]

I didnt feel anything hundreds of miles north and inland, therefore it wasnt bad, i dont care what some bitchy celebrity tells me

 

[Shyam]

The death toll is 700 and upwards. Darkside will still be disappoint.

Also flooding in Haiti. Eight dead I think.

Also Storms in western Europe have killed 50 people.

Source: BBC News.

 

[Warped]

We're Doomed!
Chile quake may have tipped Earth's axis

(CNN) -- The massive earthquake that struck Chile on Saturday may have shifted the Earth's axis and created shorter days, scientists at NASA say.

The change is negligible, but permanent: Each day should be 1.26 microseconds shorter, according to preliminary calculations. A microsecond is one-millionth of a second.

A large quake shifts massive amounts of rock and alters the distribution of mass on the planet.

When that distribution changes, it changes the rate at which the planet rotates. And the rotation rate determines the length of a day.

"Any worldly event that involves the movement of mass affects the Earth's rotation," Benjamin Fong Chao, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said while explaining the phenomenon in 2005.
Scientists use the analogy of a skater. When he pulls in his arms, he spins faster.

That's because pulling in his arms changes the distribution of the skater's mass and therefore the speed of his rotation.

Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, used a computer model to determine how the magnitude 8.8 quake that struck Chile on February 27 may have affected the Earth.

See scenes of devastation from the quake

He determined that the quake should have moved the Earth's figure axis about 3 inches (8 centimeters). The figure axis is one around which the Earth's mass is balanced. That shift in axis is what may have shortened days.

Such changes aren't unheard of.

The magnitude 9.1 earthquake in 2004 that generated a killer tsunami in the Indian Ocean shortened the length of days by 6.8 microseconds.

On the other hand, the length of a day also can increase. For example, if the Three Gorges reservoir in China were filled, it would hold 10 trillion gallons (40 cubic kilometers) of water. The shift of mass would lengthen days by 0.06 microsecond, scientists said.

jesus h smith! shorter days!! i want a 48 day dammit!

 

[Raziaar]

Where's superman?

 

[<RJMC>]

We're Doomed!
Chile quake may have tipped Earth's axis


jesus h smith! shorter days!! i want a 48 day dammit!

*tries to adjust clock whit very little moving*

dam it is hard...........

 

[PvtRyan]

Yo mama so fat that when she travels around the world it never gets dark.

 

[Raziaar]

7.2 magnitude aftershock rocks Chile during swearing in of President Sebastian Pinera.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/lt_chile_earthquake


Christians say earthquake is sign of god warning mankind of the Anti-Christ Sebastian Pinera.

Or not.

But seriously, pretty massive aftershock.

 

[Warped]

that aftershock is larger than most quakes. also earth hates us now more than ever

 

[The Monkey]

I read an article in Time that really hit the spot. It said that the two earthquakes in Haiti and Chile showed that humanity is not in the hands of nature, we can protect ourselves against it. The Chile earth killed 500 people, the Haitian killed 230 000, even though the former was thousands of times larger than the latter. Human society, in this case superior architecture, can withstand the forces of nature, we have our destiny in our own hands.

 

[comradesean]

I read an article in Time that really hit the spot. It said that the two earthquakes in Haiti and Chile showed that humanity is not in the hands of nature, we can protect ourselves against it. The Chile earth killed 500 people, the Haitian killed 230 000, even though the former was thousands of times larger than the latter. Human society, in this case superior architecture, can withstand the forces of nature, we have our destiny in our own hands.

Until the Earth explodes.

 

[Raziaar]

I read an article in Time that really hit the spot. It said that the two earthquakes in Haiti and Chile showed that humanity is not in the hands of nature, we can protect ourselves against it. The Chile earth killed 500 people, the Haitian killed 230 000, even though the former was thousands of times larger than the latter. Human society, in this case superior architecture, can withstand the forces of nature, we have our destiny in our own hands.

500-1000 times more powerful to be precise. It just boggles me how much difference that makes in the magnitude scale. Most people see it and think... oh... 1 or so points more powerful. Big deal.