eli5: why is it impossible to get a magnitude 10 earthquake
In: 4021
The scale for measuring earthquakes is a logarithmic scale. In a logarithmic scale each step *multiplies*, so a 2.0 would be 10x more than a 1.0. Then a 3.0 would be 10x more than a 2.0, which makes it 100x more than a 1.0. Then a 4.0 would be 10x more than a 3.0…etc.
This means that the kind of quake necessary to hit 10.0 would have to be very, very, *very* big. As it turns out, there is no fault line on the planet that’s able to create such a huge quake.
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