EARTHQUAKE SHIFT EARTH AXIS

Buzz Up! Print StoryThe powerful earthquake that killed hundreds of people.
Richard Gross, a research scientist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, calculated how much the axis may have changed in position following the the disaster.

More than 700 people died and two million are estimated to have been affected by the 8.8-magnitude tremor and subsequent tsunamis.

The quake, the most powerful to hit the nation in 50 years, sent shockwaves out from the epicentre 70 miles from Chile's second city, Concepcion.

Buildings and roads collapsed and 500,000 homes have been left severely damaged.

Six aid workers died when a plane carrying them to Concepcion crashed.

The team was on its way to help organise accommodation for those left homeless by the disaster.

Soldiers were sent to patrol Concepcion's streets after mobs set fire to shops and started looting them, hindering attempts to rescue survivors.

If the planet's axis did shift by 8cm during the quake, days would have shortened by 1.26 microseconds, Mr Gross calculated.

A microsecond is one-millionth of a second.

Earth days are 24 hours long because that is the amount of time it takes the planet to make one full rotation on its axis, so shifting the axis would affect rotation.

The quake shifted the Earth's axis by even more than the 9.1-magnitude tremor off Indonesia that started the deadly tsunami in Asia in 2004, according to Mr Gross.

This was partly because the fault line responsible for the quake in Chile "dips into Earth at a slightly steeper angle than does the fault responsible for the 2004 Sumatran earthquake", he said.

The different angle made Saturday's tremor more effective at moving Earth's mass vertically and shifting the planet's axis, Mr Gross continued.

The 2004 quake in Asia, which killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused the Earth to move by around 7cm.

It chopped an estimated 6.8 microseconds off the length of a day, Nasa said.

WONDER TWINS

Two nine year olds known as the Wonder Twins for their record-beating exam results are set to become the youngest pupils admitted to a British secondary school.
Paula and Peter Imafidon, from Waltham Forest, London, amazed parents and teachers when they passed an A-level maths exam at the age of seven.

The twins have been waiting to find out which secondary school they will attend, along with thousands of other youngsters - who are two years older - across the country.

Peter and Paula, who attend a state primary in London, were helped by their three older brothers and sisters, all of whom were also child prodigies.

Their father Chris said he was thrilled by his childen's achievements at school.

He denied any particular genius in the family, crediting their success to the Excellence in Education programme for inner city children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

"Every child is a genius," he said. "Once you identify the talent of a child and put them in the environment that will nurture that talent then the sky is the limit.

"Look at Tiger Woods, or the Williams sisters - they were nurtured.

"You can never rule anything out with them, the competition between the two of them makes them excel in anything they do.

"They are forever competing and fighting, even if it's just for the remote control or the computer."

Paula hopes to become a maths teacher, while Peter hopes to become Prime Minister one day.

PLUTO CHANGING COLOUR

Pluto, the dwarf planet on the outer edge of our solar system, has a dramatically ruddier hue than it did just a few years ago, NASA scientists said Thursday, after examining photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Skip related content
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Newest images of Pluto taken by the Hubble Space Telescope
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They said the distant orb appears mottled and molasses-colored in recent pictures, with a markedly redder tone that most likely is the result of surface ice melting on Pluto's sunlit pole and then refreezing on the other pole.

The remarkable color shift, which apparently took place between 2000 and 2002, confirms that Pluto is a dynamic world undergoing dramatic atmospheric changes and not simply a ball of ice and rock, according to scientists at the US space agency.

They said they will compare Hubble pictures taken in 1994 with some from 2002 and 2003, as they search for more signs of seasonal change, including evidence that Pluto's northern polar region has gotten brighter, while the southern hemisphere has darkened.

"The Hubble observations are the key to... showing how it all makes sense by providing a context based on weather and seasonal changes, which opens other new lines of investigation," said the leader of the study, principal investigator Marc Buie of the Southwest Research Institute in the western US city of Boulder, Colorado.

Pluto -- declassified as a full-fledged planet in August 2006 -- has a 248-year orbit and an axial tilt which, unlike Earth, alone drives the seasons. The icy orb's seasons are asymmetrical because of its elliptical orbit.

Spring transitions to polar summer quickly in the northern hemisphere, because Pluto is moving faster along its orbit when it is closer to the sun, NASA said.

Scientists are hoping to collect additional riveting snapshots of Pluto when NASA's next space probe, dubbed New Horizons, flies by the dwarf planet in 2015.

Hubble underwent repair during a space shuttle mission last year that left it with a new camera and spectrograph, as well as spruced up scientific instruments.

The repair job marked the end of NASA's human missions to the beloved Hubble. Launched in 1990, the telescope was repaired and upgraded in 1993, 1997, 1999, 2002 and 2008.

Last year's final upgrade extended the life of Hubble another five years.