NASA scientists say that the The massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Chile may have shifted the Earth's axis and created shorter days. They said, the change is negligible, but permanent. Each day should be 1.26 microseconds shorter, according to preliminary calculations. A microsecond is one-millionth of a second.A large quake shifts massive amounts of rock and alters the distribution of mass on the planet. Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, used a computer model to determine how the magnitude 8.8 quake that struck Chile on February 27 that killed at least 711 people said, when that distribution changes, it changes the rate at which the planet rotates and the rotation rate determines the length of a day.