Twitter is faster than natural disasters

The comic strip,  xkcd: Seismic Waves, echoes what was buzzing around Twitter on Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010. Tweets from people in/near the epicenter where arriving at places before the shaking began. Now that is powerful communication.

People also turned to Twitter for pictures of damage.

We turned to Twitter for a closer look at the earthquake’s impact on the communities along the Pacific. These photos of the damage in Mexicali and other locales were shared via Twitter and TwitPic this afternoon by people who experienced the earthquake first-hand. Source: Mexicali Earthquake Photos | Mashable.

Earthquakes shorten our days

Wow. I never realized that this happened.

The Feb. 27 magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile may have shortened the length of each Earth day … by about 1.26 microseconds. Source: NASA – Chilean Quake May Have Shortened Earth Days.

What does this mean? Is the earth is spinning faster? Some answers are around on the web, but not many.

A shortened day could mean sunlight shines on a spot for less time, and darkness would cover an area for less time too. I think what it would affect more than the clock though. I think gravity, surface temperature, climate, the moon’s orbit, satellites’ orbits, would be affected to name a few. Only (a shortened) time will tell.