Dr Richard Gross, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, calculated that the Chile earthquake that struck on Saturday probable shifted the Earth's axis, causing days to be slightly shorter. It would have shifted by 8cm during the 8.8 magnitude quake, this means that Earth's rotation may be affected.

He calculated that if the planet's axis did shift by eight centimeters during the Chilean quake, days would have shortened by 1.26 microseconds, A microsecond is also one-millionth of a second, so we would not need to adjust our watches. He also worked out that the Chilean quake shifted the Earth's axis by even more than the 9.1-magnitude temblor off Indonesia that set off the deadly tsunami in Asia in 2004.

NASA said that it is partly because the fault line responsible for the earthquake in Chile dips into Earth at a slightly steeper angle than does the fault responsible for the 2004 Sumatran earthquake and is more effective at moving Earth's mass vertically and shifting the planet's axis. The 2004 quake in Asia caused the Earth to move by around 7cm and chopped an estimated 6.8 microseconds off the length of a day.

So now, right now, we may be facing shorter days....