Passage of the week: 'Japan's earthquake shifted balance of the planet'

"Japan's earthquake shifted balance of the planet" is a simply written, easily understandable, and informative piece by Liz Goodwin that covers the interesting effects of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake which hit Japan on Friday, March 11.

NASA satellite images of Japan's coast moving.

Goodwin's article provides a quick description of what the earthquake caused, which was "a rift 15 miles below the sea floor that stretched 186 miles long and 93 miles wide." Then Goodwin explains how "the Pacific tectonic plate dove under the North American plate," causing the earthquake to occur. Goodwin also points how the earthquake shifted the earth's balance:

1. Eastern Japan shifted approximately 13 feet towards North America.

2. Earth's axis shifted by 6.5 inches.

3. Shortened the day by 1.6 microseconds.

4. Sank Japan downward by about two feet.

Aside from the interesting facts about the earth's shifted balance that Japan's earthquake caused, I also liked one piece of information included in the article that I had not known before: the earthquake that hit Japan on March 11 "is overwhelmingly the best-recorded great earthquake ever" (Goodwin).

Of course, Goodwin made sure to explain why Japan's recent earthquake was deemed "the best-recorded great earthquake ever" by Lucy Jones, chief scientist for the Multi-Hazards project at the U.S. Geological Society: after an earthquake struck Japan in 1995, the country installed high-tech sensors to observe even the slightest movements, which enabled scientists to calculate last week's earthquake down to the inch.

Works Cited

Goodwin, Liz. "Japan's earthquake shifted balances of the planet." Yahoo! News. Yahoo!, 14 March 2011. Web. 16 March 2011.