Large sections of a major expressway collapsed during a 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, where thousands of people perished. Earthquakes happen every day. Thousands...

The earliest earthquake measurements were simple descriptions of seismic events and their consequences. These results were unreliable depending on the distance between the earthquake's source (epicenter), and the people evaluating the event. A more...

The earliest earthquake measurements were simple descriptions called intensity ratings. These results were unreliable depending on the distance between the quake's source (epicenter), and the people evaluating the event. A more systematic...

Widely used measure of the magnitude of an earthquake, introduced in 1935 by U.S. seismologists Beno Gutenberg (1889–1960) and Charles F. Richter (1900–1985). The scale is logarithmic, so that each increase of one unit represents a 10-fold...

One named after C.D. Richter, who devised it to provide a measure of earthquakes based on the comparative quantity of energy released. The scale ranges from 0 to over 8, the largest recorded earthquake measuring 8.6 on the Richter scale. See also:...

The Richter magnitude scale, or more correctly local magnitude ML scale, assigns a single number to quantify the amount of seismic energy released by an earthquake. It is a base-10 logarithmic scale obtained by calculating the logarithm of the combined...