Japan Quake Shortens Earth Day

    Japan’s devastating¹ 8.9-magnitude earthquake last Friday was so powerful that experts say it slightly increased the Earth’s rotation（旋转） speed, making the day a fraction of a second shorter.
    U.S. space agency scientist Richard Gross said the quake shifted the way the Earth's mass is distributed, which made the planet spin a little faster, cutting the 24-hour day by an estimated 1.8 microseconds. That is less than two millionths of one second.
    The scenario² is like that of a figure skater who draws her arms into her body during a spin, in order to turn faster on the ice.
    The shift in the earth's mass was also seen in surface changes to the Japanese coastline, caused by the sudden slippage of colliding plates of the earth's crust far below.  Global positioning stations closest to the epicenter moved eastward³ by up to 4 meters during the quake.
    Last year’s 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile, and the 9.1-magnitude quake that struck Indonesia in 2004 each cut several microseconds（微秒） from the length of the Earth’s day.
    It is normal for the length of a day on Earth to vary by about 1,000 microseconds (one millisecond) throughout the year.
    The U.S. Geological Survey says the earthquake in Japan was the world’s fifth-largest since 1900.(本文由在线英语听力室整理编辑)

1 devastating   

adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的

参考例句：

• It is the most devastating storm in 20 years.这是20年来破坏性最大的风暴。
• Affairs do have a devastating effect on marriages.婚外情确实会对婚姻造成毁灭性的影响。

2 scenario   

n.剧本，脚本；概要

参考例句：

• But the birth scenario is not completely accurate.然而分娩脚本并非完全准确的。
• This is a totally different scenario.这是完全不同的剧本。

3 eastward   

adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部

参考例句：

• The river here tends eastward.这条河从这里向东流。
• The crowd is heading eastward,believing that they can find gold there.人群正在向东移去，他们认为在那里可以找到黄金。