Japan's quake shifts earth's axis by 25 cm

Initial results out of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology show that the 8.9-magnitude earthquake that rattled Japan Friday shifted the earth's rotation axis by about 25 centimetres.

INGV's report, which came hours after the devastating incident, is equivalent to "very, very tiny" changes that won't be seen for centuries, though, Canadian geologists say.

The impact of this event on the axis of rotation, said INGV, was also much greater than that of the great Sumatra earthquake of 2004, which was 7 cm of linear and two thousandths of an arcsecond angle, and probably second only to Chile earthquake of 1960. The earthquake in Chile last year shifted the Earth’s axis of about 8 cm .

"It's going to make minute changes to the length of a day. It could make very, very tiny changes to the tilt of the earth, which affects the seasons, but these effects are so small, it'd take very precise satellite navigation to pick it up."

The earth's rotation will now shift at a different speed because the globe's mass has been redistributed, said Michael Bostock, a University of B.C. earthquake seismology professor.

CLASSIFICATION FOR INTENSITY – The earthquake of 11 March 2011 stands at fifth place in the ranking of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded since the seismic surveys are accurate.

1 – The strongest ever occurred May 22, 1960 between Temuco and Concepcion in Chile: 9.5 on the Richter scale, resulted in 1,655 dead, 3,000 injured, 2,000,000 homeless. That triggered the tsunami caused 61 deaths in Hawaii – did not exist warning systems and even it was known that a tsunami could cross an entire ocean – 138 in Japan, 32 in the Philippines.

2 – The second strongest quake was recorded March 28, 1964 in Alaska, the epicenter of the earthquake of 9.2 degrees was in Prince William Sound, not far from Anchorage: the dead were 113 for the Tsunami and 15 shocks. In nearby Montague Island, the land rose up to 13-15 meters.Valdez in the Gulf of the tsunami wave reached a height of 67 meters, 15 deaths were recorded on the coast of California and Oregon, even in Cuba and Puerto Rico took place small tidal waves.

3- 9.1: it is the magnitude of the earthquake that everyone remembers very well. On Boxing Day, January 26, 2004 two minutes before 8 am (local time) on the Asian plate moves over the Indo-Australian subduction beneath Sumatra. The north-west of the island was devastated following the tsunami in Thailand came up and swept the east coast of Sri Lanka, India and as far as Somalia in the west. In all the dead were 230 000, but some estimates speak of 300 thousand victims.

4- 4 November 1952: south-east coast of Kamtchaka Island Russia (then Soviet). It is an earthquake of 9 Richter scale, there is no news of casualties. Hawaii got a 3-meter tsunami

CLASSIFICATION FOR VICTIMS – The strongest earthquakes are not always those that produce the greatest number of victims. Often, in fact, occur in uninhabited areas. Instead, less intense but earthquakes near densely populated areas or buildings without earthquake resistant, produce devastating effects.

1 – More than 800,000 deaths, estimates of the Chinese earthquake of 8 degrees of Shaanxi January 23, 1556.
2 – Between 250,000 and 700,000 victims in the earthquake of 7.5 degrees in Tangshan, China, July 28, 1976.
3-250 thousand deaths estimated in the May 21 earthquake in Antioch of 525, maybe 8 degrees
4 – even China, Gansu, December 16, 1920: 235,000 dead, probably due to a shock of 7.8 on the Richter scale.
5-230 thousand deaths in the 26 December 2004 Sumatra earthquake tsunami
The earthquake of 7 degrees on January 12, 2010 in and around Port-au-Prince in Haiti is estimated to have caused 223,000 deaths and puts him in seventh place