Time is on my side
Posted on 12.28.04 12:36PM in bliss
For those of you facing the dark recesses of depression during the dreary winter months, chin up. I’ve got some wonderful news.
The recent earthquake in Asia was the most cataclysmic in years, scoring quite favorably on the Richter assessment. Scientists say that the quake was so severe that whole islands were moved 20-30 meters and that the excess energy caused by fault slippage actually caused the earth to wobble on its axis. But that’s not the cool part.
Now, I realize that Sunday’s seismic event was a travesty. I am not attempting to downplay the deaths of the tens of thousands of deceased; I am merely trying to extract some good from what would otherwise be a shame. Those peoples’ deaths just afforded you a little longer to live – or so you would think.
Geologists suggest that the shock of the quake actually interfered with the Earth’s rotation and, thus, caused the day to be 3 microseconds shorter.
Big deal, right? Well, actually, yes.
If you were to take the average American lifespan of 77.2 years, and break it down into days, you would find that the average U.S. inhabitant lives 28178 days, not counting leap years. If you were to multiply this number by the number of seconds (3 x 10^-6) missed each day, you get approximately .084534 seconds.
This fraction of a second, even though it is in no way technically added to the average American lifespan, appears as a faux addendum. That is, after you serve your 77.2 years, you could view it as a gift from some higher power – like Father Time, or God, or the Ghost of Richard Nixon.
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