March 11, 2010: Pictures of widespread devastation leave no doubt: Last month's 8.8 magnitude earthquake in coastal Chile was strong. How strong? NASA scientists say it might have shifted the axis of Earth itself.
"If our calculations are correct, the quake moved Earth's figure axis by about 3 inches (8 cm)," says geophysicist Richard Gross of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
On Feb. 27, 2010, the Chilean quake may have moved the figure axis as much in a matter of minutes as it normally moves in a whole year. It was a truly seismic shift—no pun intended.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2...figureaxis.htm