Japan earthquake shortened days on Earth

&#62; The Earth's figure axis is not the same as its north-south axis in space, which it spins around once every day at a speed of about 1,000 mph (1,604 kph). The figure axis is the axis around which the Earth's mass is balanced and the north-south axis by about 33 feet (10 meters).<p>Could someone explain this paragraph? how does one measure a rotation speed in terms of distance over time ? And I just cant figure what the second sentence means at all...

I wonder if we will finally get to use negative leap seconds.

Oh boy!<p>That means the monthly pay only is only 11 days- 19.8microseconds away.

This explains why I feel so tired this morning.

This is nothing more than an educated guess. While Gross is theoretically correct, I'm not certain our implements can detect a 5.4 µSec change over 3 days. Not only that, I doubt it matters enough for us to care.<p>Assume that our sensors <i>are</i> sensitive enough to detect this for a moment. The day-length of the earth changed by:<p><pre><code> 0.0000000000208333350570911 % </code></pre> Who bloody well cares about that? I think scientific navel gazing just got a new mascot.