This week’s earthquake caused the main island of Japan to shift as much as 13 feet to the east, seismologists say. That may sound like a shocker, but it’s just one of the natural changes that come along with an 8.9-magnitude temblor — like the 1.6-microsecond speed-up of Earth’s daily rotation and the 4-inch shift in Earth’s axis.
The eastward shift was documented by Japan’s Geonet network of GPS monitoring stations, based in Tsukuba, said Ken Hudnut, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earthquake Hazards Program in Pasadena, Calif. Similar shifts took place during last year’s 8.8 earthquake off the Chilean coast, as well as the 9.1 earthquake near Sumatra that caused a disastrous tsunami in 2004.
