Explained: Measuring earthquakes
Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - 10:00
in Earth & Climate
The powerful earthquake that struck Japan in March was a 9.0-magnitude event. But this was not, as some people may assume, as registered on the Richter scale, the famed measuring system dating to the 1930s. Seismologists today do not use the Richter scale as a universal tool for measuring earthquakes, because it does not accurately measure the energy emitted in jolts as big as the one that hit Japan.