Breaking News - Tsunami Warning! Southern Thailand

[jdinasia]

The USGC states:

Seismologists have observed that for every magnitude 6 earthquake there are 10 of magnitude 5, 100 of magnitude 4, 1,000 of magnitude 3, and so forth as the events get smaller and smaller. This sounds like a lot of small earthquakes, but there are never enough small ones to eliminate the occasional large event. It would take 32 magnitude 5's, 1000 magnitude 4's, 32,000 magnitude 3's to equal the energy of one magnitude 6 event. So, even though we always record many more small events than large ones, there are never enough to eliminate the need for the occasional large earthquake.

I'm sorry, what? Could I have this is layman's terms please ?

I'll give it a go ...... First you need to know 2 things

---- 1) earthquakes relieve stress on the crust of the earth .. they have to happen. It takes alot of release of the stress on the crust to keep things from wrecking totally. So above ... we NEED magnitude 6 quakes.

---- 2) The scale ... a one is like taking a toy baby hammer and hittting the ground ... a 2 is like taking an upholstry hammer .... a 3 is like taking a sledge hammmer ... a 4 is like using a pile driver .... a 5 is like dropping a tank out of a plane from a mile up ... etc

So ... we need them! and we need big ones or lots and lots and lots of little ones! All the mountains in the world that were NOT formed by volcanos directly ... were formed by plate tectonics and similar events ... earthquakes relieve the stress on the plates ... so no earthquakes and we could have a new mountain range spring up some place inconvenient!

Guys please help me out if I made any basic mistakes!