Let’s take a look at some of the interesting geographic consequences of the earthquake in the Indian Ocean, as collected on Wikipedia. As a result of the quake:
- The rotation of Earth sped up slightly — a day is now 3 microseconds shorter. However, the gravitational pull of the moon slows our rotation by 15 microseconds a year, so the shorter days won’t last very long. Not that we’d notice it, of course.
- The Earth has an extra inch of wobble in it’s rotation. Again, it wobbles up to 50 feet normally, so this is insignificant but interesting.
- Some islands in the region may have moved position by up to 66 feet. The northern tip of Sumatra may have moved by up 118 feet. Looks like some maps will need to be revised.
Wikipedia also includes this image, which shows a much clearer before and after view of the devastation that previous images
