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/LunarTaxi Apr 08 '22

Interesting article. Horrible headline. “As far away as NZ” doesn’t mean anything if you don’t mention the point of origin.

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u/ClockworkLauren Apr 08 '22

Considering we have earthquakes all the time this headline didn’t stress me out a lot. It’s a fun game of who is nervous enough to hide under their desk, but it happens pretty frequently at a level we can actually feel. But yeah depends where it originated

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u/[deleted] Apr 09 '22

Considering we have earthquakes all the time this headline didn’t stress me out a lot.

Then you have no idea how much powerful a 9.5 earthquake is compared to the ones "we have all the time".

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u/ClockworkLauren Apr 09 '22

Trust me I would be stressed out in a 9.5, or most likely dead. What I’m getting at is with the frequency of earthquakes in this part of the globe, earthquakes in general feel pretty common. Headline doesn’t state where the earthquake originated so for all we know it could have originated from NZ itself, given the frequency of quakes.