A remarkable animation by theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA ) shows every record seism that took berth between January 1 , 2001 , and December 31 , 2015 . It ’s like watch the world fall apart in real - time .
Some celebrated and devastating earthquakes are of course included in this animation , an interactive interpretation of which can be witness by clickinghere .
The tsunami - inducing Tohoku earthquake that killed over 18,000 people in March 2011 in Japan can be experience , as can the December 2004 Sumatran quake and tsunami that killed nearly quarter of a million .
Over the last 15 age , there have been 20 earthquakes registering as 8.0 M or declamatory . The two aforementioned earthquakes were the most powerful during this menstruation , both register as 9.1 molar concentration effect .
Not only were these tremors fantastically destructive , but they were once - in - a - lifetime happening . In fact , there have only been around seven temblor that registered as a 9.0 M or above since records begin .
The most hefty seism in register history , a 9.5 M , took spot inChile back in May 1960 . The Tohoku quake rate as the fourthly - most powerful , and the Sumatran case ranks as the third .
The moment magnitude scale – the successor to the widely used Richter scurf – is logarithmic , which means that a 7.0 M earthquake is 32 times less energetic than a 8.0 MB temblor . That means that a 9.0 M quake is roughly 35.2 trillion times more industrious than a 1.0 M quake .
A model animation of the tsunami generated by the record - break 2011 Tohoku earthquake off the coast of Japan . PTWCvia YouTube
broadly speaking speaking , the more powerful an earthquake , the less frequently it go on , as it takes longer for tenseness to roll up .
Almost all take home along tectonic boundaries , but there areexceptionsto this . Fracking , parts of the upper mantle peeling off , and the reactivation of ancient architectonic “ scars ” can have earthquake far from major geological fault melodic phrase .
As for ceremonious quake , you could find them in areas of contraction ( Himalayas ) , sideways movement ( San Andreas Fault , California ) , and even extension ( Apennines , Italy ) . Although the slow movement of architectonic plate helps progress up accent , theMoon ’s gravitative pullis also eff to cause a fair amount of quakes every class .
In amount , then , our planet is active and kicking , and it’sbeautiful visualizationslike this that remind us of that .
