Did you hear about the earthquake??

[Azwed]

I bet WH has. There was a 4.4 magnitude earthquake 15 miles east of the Yucca mountain nuclear site yesterday.

Whoppeee sounds great.

 

[Rhys]

Hey! No wonder those dandylions in my yard sprung up to massive height and started throwing sod at the neighbors


I thought I just needed a bigger can of Roundup...

 

[JackIsCool]

I am never in the right place at the right time

 

[ExLimey]

CNN reported about it last night but when they didn't mention how big the quake was I figured they were just trying to scare everyone.

4.4 is not that big, I've been through four major quakes, two over 5.0 and two over 6.0. No earthquake is fun, in fact they are very terrifying.

I would hope that whoever studied the area as a possible site studied the geology of the area and how big any potential earthquakes near there could be.

 

[Azwed]

CNN reported about it last night but when they didn't mention how big the quake was I figured they were just trying to scare everyone.

4.4 is not that big, I've been through four major quakes, two over 5.0 and two over 6.0. No earthquake is fun, in fact they are very terrifying.

I would hope that whoever studied the area as a possible site studied the geology of the area and how big any potential earthquakes near there could be.

Supposebly the site can withstand a quake up to a 1000 times more powerful.

I foget how the scale goes up but I think a 7 magnitude quake would be about a thousand times more power ful then a 4.4. The scale goes up in funny factors.

This area gets small to moderate quakes fairly often. They have several over the last 20 some years this was just the latest. The site is supposed to hold for 10,000 years. I just wonder if it will hold up to thousands of small to moderate quakes over a long time period.

Fatigue of the structures from all the smaller quakes will eventually be a factor.

 

[patient1]

Supposebly the site can withstand a quake up to a 1000 times more powerful.

I foget how the scale goes up but I think a 7 magnitude quake would be about a thousand times more power ful then a 4.4. The scale goes up in funny factors.

I've never lived in an eartquake region, or experienced one. As I recall, The Richter scale works on magnitudes of 10.

So a 4.4 would be 4times more powerful than a 4.0.

A 5.0 would be 10 times more powerful than a 4.0.

A 6.0 would be 10x more than a 5.0, & 100x more than a 4.0.

A 7.0 would be 10x more than a 6.0, 100x more than a 5.0, & 1000x more than a 4.0.

So if I'm right about the scale , & the reporters got their facts straight, what would 1000x a 4.4 be? I have a headache from working with #'s today already, I don't know. 7.4?

 

[Azwed]

Yeah I think you are right.

 

[patient1]

If I'm right, I'd say you're good at estimating.

 

[Zamdrist]

<raising hand>

That was me, I came.

 

[Azwed]

Estimation was something we did minproject on back when I was still in engineering. That was one of the things I was good at and I thought was fun.

 

[patient1]

<raising hand>

That was me, I came.

Good thing you were alone, so that no-one got hurt.

 

[Azwed]

Good thing you were alone, so that no-one got hurt.

Ouch.

 

[Bigdog]

I've never lived in an eartquake region, or experienced one. As I recall, The Richter scale works on magnitudes of 10.

So a 4.4 would be 4times more powerful than a 4.0.

A 5.0 would be 10 times more powerful than a 4.0.

A 6.0 would be 10x more than a 5.0, & 100x more than a 4.0.

A 7.0 would be 10x more than a 6.0, 100x more than a 5.0, & 1000x more than a 4.0.

So if I'm right about the scale , & the reporters got their facts straight, what would 1000x a 4.4 be? I have a headache from working with #'s today already, I don't know. 7.4?

You would be correct. I snagged a snippet from the USGS site:

Because of the logarithmic basis of the scale, each whole number increase in magnitude represents a tenfold increase in measured amplitude; as an estimate of energy, each whole number step in the magnitude scale corresponds to the release of about 31 times more energy than the amount associated with the preceding whole number value.

So basically a 4.4 is not much of anything but is twice as strong as a 4.3. Out here in California we call that a massage.

 

[Mellon Collie]

Isn't a 4.0 considered normal isostatic adjustment?

Maybe it's a 3.0, hell I don't know. It's been years since I had earth science.

 

[Azwed]

Don't know MC I don't remember going over that in any of me geology classes.

Ah yes logarithims oh how much fun those were

 

[Svedish_Chef]

3's are nothing special 4's are the start of of something worthwhile

 

[Weird Harold]

I bet WH has. There was a 4.4 magnitude earthquake 15 miles east of the Yucca mountain nuclear site yesterday.

Whoppeee sounds great.

Actually, no I haven't heard about it -- I've been on a reading and late night soccer binge and haven't watched the news for about a month.

I do know it wasn't enough to notice here in Las Vegas -- At least not in a ground floor apartment.

Exlimey said, "I would hope that whoever studied the area as a possible site studied the geology of the area and how big any potential earthquakes near there could be."

That's one of the things that is controversial about the final report on Yucca Mountain -- It completely ignores the existing earthquake faults in the region or dismisses them as "old and inactive." "Old and inactive" is another way of saying "Overdue for a big one."