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Tsunami quake wobbled Earth's axis
December 28, 2004
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An earthquake that unleashed deadly tidal waves on Asia was so powerful it made the Earth wobble on its axis and permanently altered the regional map, US geophysicists said today.
The 9.0-magnitude temblor that struck 250 km south-east of Sumatra island on Sunday may have moved small islands as much as 20 metres, according to one expert.
"That earthquake has changed the map," US Geological Survey expert Ken Hudnut told AFP.
"Based on seismic modelling, some of the smaller islands off the south-west coast of Sumatra may have moved to the south-west by about 20 metres. That is a lot of slip."
The north-western tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra may also have shifted to the south-west by around 36 metres, Hudnut said.
In addition, the energy released as the two sides of the undersea fault slipped against each other made the Earth wobble on its axis, Hudnut said.
"We can detect very slight motions of the Earth and I would expect that the Earth wobbled in its orbit when the earthquake occurred due to the massive amount of energy exerted and the sudden shift in mass," Hudnut said.
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AdvertisementAnother USGS research geophysicist agreed that the Earth would have got a "little jog", and that the islands off Sumatra would have been moved by the quake.
However, Stuart Sipkin, of the USGS National Earthquake Information Centre in Golden Colorado, said it was more likely that the islands off Sumatra had risen higher out of the sea than they had moved laterally.
"In this case, the Indian plate dived below the Burma plate, causing uplift, so most of the motion to the islands would have been vertical, not horizontal."
The tsunamis unleashed by the fourth-biggest earthquake in a century have left more than 23,000 people dead in eight countries across Asia and as far as Somalia in East Africa.
The tsunamis wiped out entire coastal villages and pulled beach-goers out to sea.
The International Red Cross estimated that up to one million people have been displaced by the natural disaster.
- AFP