Tectonics and GPS - some correction needed. From The Sydney Morning Herald:
NSW and Victoria just jumped 1.8 metres north
On New Year’s Day, NSW and Victoria jumped north by 1.8 metres – while the rest of the country remained firmly fixed in place.
No, you did not miss an earthquake. And no, we’re not seceding from the rest of the continent.
And the reason:
Australia sits atop one of the fastest-moving tectonic plates in the world. We move about seven centimetres north-east every year.
“That’s about the speed your hair or fingernails grow,” says NSW Surveyor General Narelle Underwood, who led NSW’s ‘jump’.
In the days of paper maps our tectonic drift did not pose a real problem. The continent might move but the distance from Melbourne to Sydney stayed the same. That meant Australia could get away with the slight inaccuracy that has crept in since we last set our coordinates in 1994.
But paper maps have gone the way of the dinosaurs; we use GPS now. And GPS notices.
A simple correction. Wonderful that we have gone from miles to fractions of an inch in just 40 years or so.
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