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General Science => General Science => Topic started by: Alan McDougall on 03/12/2008 09:22:03

Title: What effect did the great Indian ocean have on the earths revolution?
Post by: Alan McDougall on 03/12/2008 09:22:03

Greetings

Question,
What effect did the great Indian Ocean 2004 tsunami have on the earths revolution? and maybe tilt

Alan

Title: What effect did the great Indian ocean have on the earths revolution?
Post by: Bored chemist on 03/12/2008 19:21:22

From the wiki page about the atmosphere I learn that "The average mass of the atmosphere is about 5 quadrillion metric tons or 1/1,200,000 the mass of Earth. According to the National Center for Atmospheric Research".
Also I know that the equator is moving at roughly 1000 MPH but the fastest windspeeds are of the order of a tenth of that.

The earth is big and fast so I doubt any given event in the atmosphere has any significant effect on the earth. Given long enough viscous drag will tend to slow the earth down but that's a tiny effect.

Title: What effect did the great Indian ocean have on the earths revolution?
Post by: lyner on 03/12/2008 22:11:41

It's another example of where 'the numbers count'.

Title: What effect did the great Indian ocean have on the earths revolution?
Post by: Don_1 on 04/12/2008 07:46:22

It did have an effect on the tilt of the Earths axis, but this has apparantly righted itself. Can't remmeber where I read this, it may have been the NASA site.

Title: What effect did the great Indian ocean have on the earths revolution?
Post by: dentstudent on 04/12/2008 09:34:28

A single person jumping up and down has an effect on both. It's just a question of whether it's measureable or calculable.

Title: What effect did the great Indian ocean have on the earths revolution?
Post by: Bored chemist on 04/12/2008 12:32:51

The law of conservation of angular momentum means that when we stop jumping about and the storm dies down the earth's spin will settle back to where it was.
Since the atmospher isn't big and most of it doesn'tt move very fast the effect is small (as well as being temporary)

Title: What effect did the great Indian ocean have on the earths revolution?
Post by: dentstudent on 04/12/2008 12:43:14

How about the orbit? It was a (although not huge by comparison, but not insignificant) force that occured pretty much on one side of the planet - would this have an effect, and of so, would it also be temporary?