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Tommyblockhead20 t1_j86d03r wrote

Reply to comment by borgendurp in [OC] More than 130 earthquakes rocked Turkey in 48 hours by MePiyush

Huh? That’s just… not how earthquakes work. I guarantee you you’ve lived through probably hundreds, if not thousands of magnitude 1 earthquakes. They are extremely weak, but extremely common.

Every 1 number higher on the Richter scale, that means earthquakes are 10 times as powerful, but 10 times less likely. So for every 8 magnitude earthquake (like the one in Turkey), there was probably about 10 7’s, 100 6’s, 1,000 5’s, 10,000 4’s, 100,000 3’s, 1,000,000 2’s, and 10,000,000 1’s.

So no, I don’t think there was 2 7-8s, ~10 6’s, ~20 5’s, ~100 4’s, and no 0-4 magnitude earthquakes… They just didn’t bother showing the super weak and super frequent ones.

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borgendurp t1_j86ml3w wrote

.. no, in fact, I have not lived through "probably hundreds" as the biggest I've lived through was a 1,5 one. And that was the only one above 1 where I live. In 28 years.

>So for every 8 magnitude earthquake (like the one in Turkey), there was probably about 10 7’s, 100 6’s, 1,000 5’s, 10,000 4’s, 100,000 3’s, 1,000,000 2’s, and 10,000,000 1’s.

>So no, I don’t think there was 2 7-8s, ~10 6’s, ~20 5’s, ~100 4’s, and no 0-4 magnitude earthquakes… They just didn’t bother showing the super weak and super frequent ones.

You're just literally pulling numbers out of your ass lol.

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Tommyblockhead20 t1_j86ru04 wrote

Ok, I will admit I misspoke there. Since magnitude 1 quakes are so weak, they actual affect a tiny area, so you won’t actually be on top of the epicenter for that many earthquakes unless you live on a fault line. What I meant was you are in the general area of that many quakes, like within 100-200 km. A distance that you would feel it if there was a major earthquake. Also, I wasn’t talking about earthquakes above 1, but earthquakes that were 1. But it doesn’t even really made as that was just an example.

My point is small earthquakes are way more common than the large ones. I forgot to include my sources for the frequency numbers, so here you go.

https://www.iris.edu/hq/inclass/fact-sheet/how_often_do_earthquakes_occur

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale

For the Turkey numbers, I literally looked at the image from this post and did my best guess. Feel free to count them yourself and let me know what you counted. But I think even at a quick glance, it’s pretty clear that the lower the magnitude was, the more quakes there were, until suddenly it hits 4 and there’s 0 with a magnitude less than 4? No way. That’s just not how earthquakes work. In fact, almost nothing in nature works like that. It’s usually some kind of curve, not exponentially increasing and then suddenly 0.

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borgendurp t1_j86subu wrote

Literally. None of your sources. Back your claim. If this is so undeniably true. Show me something that literally says "between 4,0 or higher earthquakes, there's always minor earthquakes in the range of 0-4,0". I think we both know you can't do that.

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