Australia Moves 2.7 Inches Per Year

[vellavu]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/24/w...alia-continental-drift-location-gps.html?_r=0

The trouble is caused by plate tectonics, the shifting of big chunks of the earth’s surface. Australia happens to be on one of the fastest-moving pieces of all, and by geological standards it’s practically flying: about 2.7 inches northward a year, with a slight clockwise rotation as well.

People on the ground may not notice, but the Global Positioning System does. So Australia needs to adjust its longitudes and latitudes so they line up with GPS coordinates.

Four times in the last 50 years, Australia has reset the official coordinates of everything in the country to make them more accurate, correcting for other sources of error as well as continental drift. The last adjustment, in 1994, was a doozy: about 656 feet, enough to give the delivery driver an alibi for ringing your neighbor’s doorbell instead of yours.

 

[white avenger]

If they get within our territorial waters, can we adopt them as a 51st state?

 

[November]

One of the few things I remember from primary school! Haha.

We're just an island, floating through life.

I woulnt mind too much if we hit PNG or the land of the kiwi, it'd be nice to drive to another country

 

[HowiMetdaSlayer]

Pretty soon (geologically speaking) we'll have to call it 'up over'. 😉

 

[GwenRaiden]

I woulnt mind too much if we hit PNG or the land of the kiwi, it'd be nice to drive to another country

I want you to float towards Scotland 🙁

 

[thetopher]

I read this as 'Australians move 2.7 inches per year.' Which didn't seem right to me. No nation is that lazy.


The UK is moving a couple of millimeters per year away from Europe- Northwest actually. So y'see, the entire island wanted Brexit all along. 😉

 

[ILLYRIAN]

Australia might be moving northward to Indonesia by 2.7 inches a year but it is getting closer to New Zealand which is South east. Why is Australia getting closer to New Zealand faster than anywhere else, to get a decent Rugby Union team.
If Australia got close to America we'd sink it bloody quick. And it would be easy to do as the centre of Australia is 50 foot below sea level the area is known as Lake Eyre. Lake Eyre is the home of one of Australia's oldest yacht club, a yacht race is held there annually, regardless if there is any water or not.

 

[AnthonyCordova]

Everything is always moving, not just australia. The earth's crust is dynamic, not static. It's the reason why we have earthquakes, volanoes and everything else. That's how plate tectonics work. Pangea, gondwana...the continents have come together to form a single super continent and drifted apart like a dozen times already according to existing geological evidence with layers of rock dating more than 900 million years, and who knows how many more times if we had rocks that went back farther. This literally is ancient news.