Earth Tremor

[berolina]

I guess Austrians would be really shocked if there were an earthquake of that strength. I have never personally experienced one, they are not at all common in Austria.
...

Actually there was one in Austria yesterday, only 3.6 but there you go!

see for details (click on Aktuelle Liste...)
http://www.gfz-potsdam.de/news/recent/index.html

[dannyd0g]

Actually there was one in Austria yesterday, only 3.6 but there you go!

see for details (click on Aktuelle Liste...)
http://www.gfz-potsdam.de/news/recent/index.html

I wonder if it was all part of the same one ? Something to do with massive 'fault lines' where 'tectonic plates' join or something ?

Was it at the same time ?

[Ekphantos]

Actually there was one in Austria yesterday, only 3.6 but there you go!

Well, I live in Geneva at the moment

[berolina]

Well, I live in Geneva at the moment

Pity you missed it

though there are plenty of earthquakes to be had in Switzerland, too
http://www.seismo.ethz.ch/redpuma/re...wiss_list.html

[berolina]

I wonder if it was all part of the same one ? Something to do with massive 'fault lines' where 'tectonic plates' join or something ?

Don't know. Don't think so, though as there's no tectonic plate boundary nowhere near the UK nor Austria

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Plates_tect2_en.svg

Was it at the same time ?

No, it was at 19:57:59.2 UTC (that's GMT for you)

[dannyd0g]

Don't know. Don't think so, though as there's no tectonic plate boundary nowhere near the UK nor Austria

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Plates_tect2_en.svg



No, it was at 19:57:59.2 UTC (that's GMT for you)

Thanks for the info. Though im even more confused now, if theres no boundaries anywhere near us how are we still getting earhquakes ?

[stegorjus]

I read somewhere that these scales go up in x10 increments. So a 5 is 10 times as powerful as a 4. If that's right the UK tremor must be over 50 times stronger than the Austrian one. A 9 is a billion times as strong as a 1. I'm starting to doubt this even as I write it.

[berolina]

I read somewhere that these scales go up in x10 increments. So a 5 is 10 times as powerful as a 4. If that's right the UK tremor must be over 50 times stronger than the Austrian one. A 9 is a billion times as strong as a 1. I'm starting to doubt this even as I write it.

That sounds very confusing...but maybe this helps: according to Wikipedia a 5 equals 32,000 tons TNT and a 3.5 is 73 tons TNT. For a 9 it would be 32 billion tons TNT.

[Ekphantos]

It is a logarithmic scale, that's what makes it a bit confusing.
I think it is explained rather well in the wikipedia article.

To stay with stgorjus sample:

Magnitude = log (amplitude)
4=log(A1) => A1=10^4
5=log(A2) => A2=10^5

so the measured amplitude is 10x higher if the magnitude increases by 1.
At least that's how I understand it from Wikipedia, I am not at all an expert on this.

[dantuck_7]

I was watching a film at the time and live near to a railway line - so put it down to a large freight train!

[Near]

It rocked my (dream) world! lol.

Woke up XD