Japan’s March 11th massive earthquake altered the planet’s gravitational field

December 8, 2011 – TOKYO – Last week, we learned that the massive Tohuku earthquake that rocked Japan earlier this year shifted the sea floor of the Pacific Ocean by about 50 meters. Today, New Scientist informs us that the same earthquake was so powerful that it altered the planet’s gravitational field and, in turn, the orbits of satellites circling Earth. The findings were made by two satellites that make up NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, which has the express purpose of monitoring fluctuations in the Earth’s gravitational field, which are caused by adjustments in the planet’s mass, such as those caused by the melting of polar ice caps. How did GRACE come to the conclusion that satellites were knocked slightly off course? The researchers calculated how the relative velocity of the two satellites changed as they passed over the affected region. GRACE records variations in the gravity field due to other processes too, but these background signals change over larger timescales than that of the quake, and so could be identified and subtracted. The leftover signal showed that the rate at which the distance between the two GRACE satellites changed – the so-called range rate – was twice as high in the month after the earthquake as in the month prior to the event. Only two earthquakes since 2002 had been recorded as altering the gravitational field – the 2004 Indian Ocean quake and last year’s megaquake in Chile – and now the Tohuku quake has joined that rarified company. The GRACE team also found that monitoring shifts in satellite orbits could give a more accurate reading of how powerful an earthquake was, as their findings suggest the quake was a 9.1 on the Richter scale, compared to the 9.0 that Earth-based sensors arrived at. –The Mark

Planet’s stability eroding: Even before the March 11, 2011 9.0 earthquake which struck Japan, on December 25, 2010, I warned that the planet’s stability was eroding due to a consecutive string of large-scale seismic events impacting the globe. As tectonic plate tension increases from the geological change currently sweeping across the planet, Earth’s stability is at increased risk from a lurch event brought on by another large magnitude earthquake in the upper 8 or 9.0 range. The picture on the left of the Earth taken shortly after the March 11 earthquake in Japan by the European Space Agency’s GOCE’s satellite shows the true shape of the Earth based on its gravitational field. Its lopsided physique, which has been repeatedly battered by 3 very strong earthquakes over the short span of 9 years, is an indication of the dangerous deformation of the planet’s stability, which is only further stressed by angular momentum. It’s a deformed geoid that’s becoming more stressed to spin. Another significant large earthquake will only exacerbate an already deteriorating situation and could increase risks of a seismic lurch-type event where tectonic plates are shoved several meters rather than their routine centimeters- creating a cascading double or rippling earthquake event that could leave the planet reeling from a breakout of global aftershocks. This would not be a crustal slip but it would certainly be a precursor to it.