[time-nuts] Japan Quake May Have Shortened Earth Days, Moved Axis

[Jim Lux]

On 7/14/11 10:54 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> In message<3209.12.6.201.213.1310686158.squirrel at popaccts.quikus.com>, "J. For
> ster" writes:
>
>> If you got all the Chinese to just stand on a chair, it would increase the
>> Moment of Inertia of the earth a smitch, and it would slow the rotation
>> because of the Conservation of Angular Momentum.
>
> 1. It's not obvious that there are that many chairs in China.
>
> 2. It really does not change the momentum that much:
>
> 	m(pop,china) = 1.5e9 * 50kg = 7.5e10 kg
> 	m(earth)     = 5.97e24 kg
>
> A ratio of roughly 8e13...
>


At first I thought, hey, we measure ADEV variations of that sort of the 
level.  But then, I remembered that not only is the mass small, but the 
radius change is small.  maybe a meter out of almost 7 million.

So now we're at an effect of one part in, say, 1E19.

I think to do this kind of thing on a detectable scale with manmade 
cause, we'll need to resort to some serious terraforming (bwahaha.. 
project plowshare, here I come)