Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Is the wobble not just me?

I have MS, and problems walking from it. I tend to wobble. OK, as my spouse puts it, I walk like I'm on a small boat in the middle of the ocean. He occasionally complains of sea-sickness if he watches me for too long.

So I wobble.

But so apparently, does the planet Earth. And since the Japanese earthquake, it now wobbles more.

According to this National Geographic article, we may actually be able to measure the increase in wobbliness. To measure the earth wobbles, you need a lot of data, and in Japan, there is a lot of data. Not only from the earth-quake monitoring equipment, but from a large number of GPSs that were up and running along the Japanese coast when the earthquake happened.

So we got data, and we got wobble. This may help to predict earthquakes in the future, which would be very nice.

I can predict my wobbles too... if I walk, I will wobble. I'm a simple person. But it's not just me anymore... the whole planet is wobbling more now!

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