Chilean Quake Likely Shifted Earth’s Axis NASA Scientist Say

[Sabre]

Article

March 1 (Bloomberg) -- The earthquake that killed more than 700 people in Chile on Feb. 27 probably shifted the Earth’s axis and shortened the day, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist said.
Earthquakes can involve shifting hundreds of kilometers of rock by several meters, changing the distribution of mass on the planet. This affects the Earth’s rotation, said Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who uses a computer model to calculate the effects.
“The length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second),” Gross, said today in an e-mailed reply to questions. “The axis about which the Earth’s mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches).”

[Mr Kleen]

[zaxrex]

I wonder if those deep space radio telescopes and such have to compensate for the axis shift?
It would suck to wait two years to get the telescope time at an observatory and you load your tracking program, just to come back the next day to find everything was all wonky...

[avriette]

I wonder if those deep space radio telescopes and such have to compensate for the axis shift?

i would imagine they need a "patch" for those presently up there, and...

It would suck to wait two years to get the telescope time at an observatory and you load your tracking program, just to come back the next day to find everything was all wonky...

some people put birds up for two years or a skosh more or less. while it's probably not so hard to adjust for, it's gotta be an irritation.

[zaxrex]

Birds=satellites?
I'm talking terrestrial based observation, deep space targets where such a small axis change can result in millions of miles target difference.

Whatchew talkin' about, Willis?

[Sabre]

Birds=satellites?

Yep

[zaxrex]

Would an earth axis shift like that have any effect on satellites?

[Sabre]

Misalignment and the shortening of the day could cause problems for guidance systems and GPS... At least, that would be my thought on it.