Could constant earthquakes make each day/night cycle shorter than 24 hours?

Question

If so, what will that do to scientists predictions of future solar/lunar eclipes's?

Answer 1

The earth's rotation causes the day/night cycle.  The rotation is actually slowing down gradually over millions of years.

Earthquakes, on the other hand, are caused when pieces of continents called "plates" move suddenly.  And they really don't affect the speed of the earth's rotation.

So the short answer to your question is NO, constant earthquakes wouldn't affect the day and night cycle.

Now, let's go hypothetical, just for fun.  Let's say a really really really huge astroid were to hit the earth just right.... the impact might cause both (a) earthquakes and (b) speed up the rotation of the earth.  Of course, for such an impact to make a measurable difference in the length of the day/night cycle, the impact would have to be HUGE, killing everyone on earth.  In that case there would be no scientists left to make scientific predictions.  But if one scientist did survive, the scientist would observe that a shorter day/night cycle would have zero impact on the solar/lunar eclipse cycle.  This is because the solar/lunar eclipse cycle depends on the orbit of the earth and moon, and not on the rotation of the earth itself.

Answer 2

they dont even need to be contant. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake With a magnitude of between 9.1 and 9.3, it is the second largest earthquake ever recorded on a seismograph. This earthquake had the longest duration of faulting ever observed, between 8.3 and 10 minutes. It caused the entire planet to vibrate as much as 1 cm (0.5 inches) so much so that some scientists claim that the tsunami-causing Sumatra earthquake resulted in a shortening of the day by 2.68 millionths of a second.