What does everyone think about this?

Question

http://www.divulgence.net/

Apparently the earth's rotational axis has shifted by a whopping 26 degrees. Does anybody buy it?

Answer 1

I have two answers. First is that the site claims that the axis of the earth rotation shifted 26 degrees over the course of 3 days in 2006. The amount of force needed to do that would rip the planet apart; we'd probably notice that. The earth is like an extremely heavy, very rapidly spinning gyroscope. Even a toy gyroscope resists changes to its axis of rotation, that's part of what makes them interesting toys. Scale it up to earth size and speed and it isn't going to move easily.

The other answer is that the site's author is desperately confused about where the sun is supposed to rise. He seems bothered that even in Dallas which is above the tropic of cancer that the sun shouldn't rise in the north east, but it does. He also claims that there is a worldwide conspiracy to hide this impossible change - which is almost always the claim of a crackpot. You don't need to be NASA to be able to detect a 26 degree shift, you don't even need a telescope. If he was correct, one night you'd see a familiar set of stars and three nights later, one third of those stars would be gone and the good old north star, Polaris, wouldn't be in the north anymore.

Answer 2

hmm maybe this is the real reason the icecaps are melting! maybe there isnt a global warming after all

Answer 3

It's a load of complete tosh, which is why it's on some random website and not headline news.

Answer 4

You can verify that this has not happened by simply looking up on a clear night. The north star, polaris, still sits right where it always was and the rest of the stars rotate around it over the course of the night. Contrary to their star comparisons, shifting the pole star 26 degrees would be in incredibly obvious move.

Answer 5

It does not shift, it does more technically precess. The axis rotates around another axis, which causes Earths axis to paint the hull of a double-cone in space. One travel around the surface of this cone takes about 25000 years. This kind of movement happens practically for all rotating bodies, at different rates and different amplitude.  

Answer 6

It depends on your definition of "recently".  Precession is the Earth's wobble.  We get one wobble every 26,000 or so years.  If "recently" means 13,000 years, then yes.

Don't you think we'd notice that if it were happening quickly?  Right now, Argentina, Chile, and South Africa would be in total darkness 24 hours a day.