This is far from the first time that day length has changed. On average the day length is about 86,400 seconds, but it fluctuates by small increments for a variety of reasons.

"Earth's rotation changes all the time as a result of not only earthquakes, but also the much larger effects of changes in atmospheric winds and oceanic currents," Gross said in a statement. "Over the course of a year, the length of the day increases and decreases by about a millisecond. The position of Earth's figure axis also changes all the time."

Previous quakes have resulted in minuscule adjustments in the length of days. Last year's magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile might have shortened the day by about 1.26 microseconds. A 2004 magnitude 9.1 Sumatran earthquake may have shortened the day by 6.8 microseconds, NASA estimates.

Reconciling computer time with this new Earth time will probably be done through the introduction of the . In 1971, the International Telecommunications Union from the time scale used by most computer systems, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), to accommodate such fluctuations on an as-needed basis.

With leap seconds, a second is added to or subtracted from the official time to reconcile it with solar time. While such adjustments are rarely noticed by system administrators, they for those systems that execute high-speed financial trading, record the results of in-depth research and execute other duties that require second-by-second resolution.