The earthquake-cum-tsunami packed such fury that it has moved Japan's main island, Honshu, by about 8 feet. It's also caused the Earth's axis to wobble by about 4 inches – something that experts say will lead to the shortening of the day by 1.6 microseconds, or just over a millionth of a second.Daylight savings time.
These very tiny changes happen because of changes in the speed of rotation of the Earth as surface mass gets shifted around in earthquakes, says Patrick Dasgupta, professor of astrophysics in Delhi University.
And though I grew up saying 'daylight savings', it is actually daylight saving.
10 comments:
Sounds like the earth keeps slightly accelerating her spin by these eruptions.
It is now Daylight Wasting Time. Tomorrow it will be Daylight Saving Time.
There is not a finer thing
Than to travel in the Spring.
As you tote your luggage doorward,
Set your clocks AN HOUR FORWARD!
- SB the YSS, many years ago
It was hard to get out of bed before
But now there's less sleep hours not more
It's worser than I thought it could be
I'm sure my clock is lying to me.
Wanting sleep? well, there's no winning:
Each day's end's a day's beginning.
Clocks speak true, no ifs, ands, buts...
Your government is what is nuts!
OT: did you experience any effects from the earthquake or tsunami?
Someone went down to see the waves come in up in northern CA, was dragged in and presumed drowned. Otherwise some boats were bobbed about a little more roughly than usual, but that was it.
Btw, Steve, thanks for the excellent poetry!
Actually, the Crescent City port was lost... a little more wreckage than I thought: http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2011/03/12/calif-ore-sustained-most-us-damage-from-tsunami/
BTW, thanks to your link, I eventually ended up at an NIST page that told me EVERYthing about Daylight Saving Time and related matters.
Another page told me of a childhood friend, WWV, which is the time standards broadcast in the US. I used to listen to it every New Year's on a shortwave radio to capture the exact moment of midnight, and once DST was in place, also every 2:00am time-change to set at least one household clock as exactly as possible. Unfortunately they don't provide that oh-so-familiar audio signal on the web, because various buffers along the way would cause the announced time to be substantially off from the correct time.
But the whole thing was a fond memory of my childhood, my days as an amateur radio operator, etc. Thanks!
My husband built his own crystal set. Fond memories indeed.
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