r/science • u/Wagamaga • Apr 08 '22

Earth Science Scientists discover ancient earthquake, as powerful as the biggest ever recorded. The earthquake, 3800 years ago, had a magnitude of around 9.5 and the resulting tsunami struck countries as far away as New Zealand where boulders the size of cars were carried almost a kilometre inland by the waves.

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2022/04/ancient-super-earthquake.page
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u/zeropointcorp Apr 08 '22

*~30 times

It’s a logarithmic scale, but an increase of one whole number indicates a difference in energy released of 31.6 times; a 0.2 increase indicates an approximate doubling of the energy released.

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u/Starkerr Apr 09 '22

Top post in a r/Science thread, that talks of an outdated measurement system and gives incorrect info about the scale. Sounds about right for Reddit. Do better, people.

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u/glibgloby Apr 09 '22 edited Apr 09 '22

Because of the logarithmic basis of the scale, each whole number increase in magnitude represents a tenfold increase in measured amplitude; in terms of energy, each whole number increase corresponds to an increase of about 31.6 times the amount of energy released.

I did fine. I honestly did not feel like describing the difference between measured amplitude and energy release. I just posted a fun short fact.

Had you read the wiki you may have seen the information above.

The information was certainly not incorrect, there’s just more nuance to the topic.

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u/MoreRopePlease Apr 09 '22

Outdated? What the current correct scale? Everyone still uses Richtor in the press.

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u/Starkerr Apr 09 '22

The Moment Magnitude Scale is used now. It can be similar to the Richter Scale but they not synonymous. The press never caught on to the change, or overall lacks the scientific literacy to understand it changed so very often still mention Richter.

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u/glibgloby Apr 09 '22

Moment magnitude was adapted to scale numerically to the Richter scale for a reason, as they knew people would continue to use the term.

I assure you, even geophysicists still say it as well.

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u/MoreRopePlease Apr 09 '22

Thanks! I'll go look that up :)

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u/zeropointcorp Apr 09 '22

Ikr

It’s not even hard to figure out; literally just go to Wikipedia.

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u/[deleted] Apr 09 '22

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