© Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty ImagesA boat grounded by the tsunami March 2, 2010 in the fishing village of Constitucion, central Chile.
While scientists and geophysicists around the world are researching ways to identify when an earthquake may occur, it is still not possible to predict the exact time and magnitude of an earthquake. However, what is known is that certain places on the planet are always at risk from big tremors. Chile is one of those places.
One of the most seismically active areas on the planet, Chile has experienced 13 events of magnitude 7.0 or greater since the 1970s.
In 1960, it also experienced the world's strongest quake, magnitude 9.5, which, in combination with tsunami waves and earthquake devastation, left 1,655 dead and 2 million homeless.
Chile lies on a zone of quake and volcanic instability that encircles the Pacific Ocean known as the "Ring of Fire."
Comment: NASA scientists
claimed the Chilean earthquake shifted the Earth's axis by "2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches)" and shortened the day by "1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second)". Just one strong quake, imagine! But the claim was
countered as unverifiable and ludicrous by German scientists:
Professor Rainer Kind from the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam said: "It is highly doubtful that these calculations are correct. The changes to the Earth's axis caused by an earthquake would be so tiny that it isn't measurable and therefore impossible to reliably detect."
Existing calculations of the movement of the Earth's axis by past earthquakes are still being debated, the expert added.
Professor Karl-Heinz Glassmeier from the Deutschen Geophysikalischen Gesellschaft (German Geophysical Association) also criticised the alleged discovery: "I hit my hand on my head as I read that yesterday.
"NASA can only make the headlines with it. A figure of eight centimetres is absolutely unverifiable."
The influence of an earthquake on the Earth's tilt would in any case be extremely low, explained Dr. Mojib Latif from The Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel.
He said: "The heavenly bodies around us are mainly responsible for the Earth's tilt. The gravity of the heavy and big planets in particular determines the gradient of the Earth's axis.
"That can not be changed by an earthquake, even one as powerful as that in Chile."
Professor Kind added: "It is impossible that there could ever be such a severe earthquake which would observably move the Earth's axis. That would only be possible through outside influences, for example a meteorite.
"The destruction however would be so great, that the movement of the Earth's axis would be comparatively insignificant."
So while a strong earthquake may not be sufficient to shift the planet's axis and thus alter the length of days, it's conceivable that a change in the arrangement of "the heavenly bodies" might well do so. The good professor probably didn't have this in mind when he used that term, but if we consider that comets and their debris trails are also "heavenly bodies", then we can see that earthquakes may be a symptom of an external cosmic force affecting Earth's rotation. Any slowing down of rotation, however imperceptible, would be sufficient to affect the magnetic field and produce incredible pressures within the planet that then shift tectonic plates, resulting in more earthquakes and volcanic eruptions as that pressure is released.
Comment: NASA scientists claimed the Chilean earthquake shifted the Earth's axis by "2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches)" and shortened the day by "1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second)". Just one strong quake, imagine! But the claim was countered as unverifiable and ludicrous by German scientists: So while a strong earthquake may not be sufficient to shift the planet's axis and thus alter the length of days, it's conceivable that a change in the arrangement of "the heavenly bodies" might well do so. The good professor probably didn't have this in mind when he used that term, but if we consider that comets and their debris trails are also "heavenly bodies", then we can see that earthquakes may be a symptom of an external cosmic force affecting Earth's rotation. Any slowing down of rotation, however imperceptible, would be sufficient to affect the magnetic field and produce incredible pressures within the planet that then shift tectonic plates, resulting in more earthquakes and volcanic eruptions as that pressure is released.