] Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA's Jet Propulsion
] Laboratory in California, theorized that a shift of mass
] toward the Earth's center during the quake Sunday caused
] the planet to spin 3 microseconds, or millionths of a
] second, faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis.
]
] When one huge tectonic plate beneath the Indian Ocean was
] forced below the edge of another "it had the effect of
] making the Earth more compact and spinning faster," Gross
] said.