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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices

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To: bentway who wrote (603263)3/14/2011 7:24:22 PM
From: TimF   of 1576159
 
Each digit up, is TEN TIMES stronger than the one before, on the Richter scale.

I used to think that was the case, but it was a mistaken belief.

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The energy release of an earthquake, which closely correlates to its destructive power, scales with the 3/2 power of the shaking amplitude. Thus, a difference in magnitude of 1.0 is equivalent to a factor of 31.6

secure.wikimedia.org

The Loma Prieta quake that hit San Francisco and pancaked all the double-decker freeways in 1989 was a 7.1!

I think it was a 6.9.

Therefore this quake would be about a thousand time more powerful. The San Francisco quake was about as powerful as a nuclear warhead on one of our Minute Men missiles. The recent Japanese quake was more like a nuclear war than a nuclear bomb in terms of total energy. Less energy than the total stockpiles of the US or the USSR, but more than say a nuclear war between Pakistan and India. Fortunately the type of energy release is less deadly per amount of energy, it looks like at least thousands, probably tens of thousands of deaths, but that much energy from nuclear bombs would have pretty much wiped out Japan.
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