Latest Expert Witness News

Japan earthquake moved the Earth’s axis by 10cm

Japanese experts said the 8.9 magnitude earthquake was caused by an upheaval in the earth’s crust that split the seabed for hundreds of kilometres off the coast.

Geologists have also calculated that the earthquake shifted the Earth’s axis by about 10cm. Satoko Oki of the University of Tokyo said the size of the quake was only seen once in every 1,000 years off the coast of Japan. She said that the Pacific plate slipped under the Japanese plate sending up a massive wall of water onto Japan’s north east coast. Yuji Yagi, associate professor at Tsukuba University, said an earthquake of this scale could trigger other earthquakes at faults that are already on the brink of a tectonic upheaval.

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