] Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA's Jet Propulsion ] Laboratory in California, theorized that a shift of mass ] toward the Earth's center during the quake Sunday caused ] the planet to spin 3 microseconds, or millionths of a ] second, faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis. ] ] When one huge tectonic plate beneath the Indian Ocean was ] forced below the edge of another "it had the effect of ] making the Earth more compact and spinning faster," Gross ] said. CNN.com - Scientists: Quake may have made Earth wobble - Dec 29, 2004 |