The six minutes of the Tohoku earthquake actually shifted the Earth on its axis of rotation, and shortened the length of a day by about a microsecond. Japan’s main island, Honshu, moved eastward by eight feet, and about 250 miles of Honshu’s northern coastline dropped by two feet. Tremors were felt as far away as Norway, North America, and Antarctica. The earthquake even produced an infrasonic (lower frequencies than humans can hear) rumble that was so loud it was detected by a satellite in space.
