7.4 Earthquake just occured near Papua, Indonesia. Multiple Big Quakes.

This thread is wild, or at it seems that way to me, to the people who know what they are talking about , all of these quakes that just happend and the 7.0..is this more than usual ?

And another:

MAP 4.8 2010/06/16 06:20:24 -1.873 136.226 35.0 BIAK REGION, INDONESIA

reply to post by gak730


It's all good. The earth is
just a bit restless this week. PMT maybe?

Seriously though. My opinion is that there are more than normal, and the news link I posted said it was felt in Darwin and apparently that IS unusual, but they are always detecting quakes in the Banda Sea.

MM

reply to post by webpirate


All 'international' quakes above 4.5 are measured by USGS in Mw (Moment of Magnitude) pretty much without exception.

'Locally' quakes use the Richter scale (ML). Some countries report numerous or all quakes in Richter, whereas for example Indonesia tend to report in Mw as far as I can see. You may also see reports as Mb (Moment of body magnitude)

The Mercalli scale as you say measures the effect 'on the ground' so to speak and actually has no (direct) connection to the magnitude of the quake. MMI is very much a consequence of terrain and geological structure and these features can magnify or diminish the effect considerably. These (S waves) Rayleigh and Love waves (the more destructive of the two) are much worse than the body waves (P waves) which really are non-destructive and are the precursors of the following destruction.

Every time I hear of a big earthquake anywhere on that archipelago I think of Toba and it's huge supervolcano. Nobody seems to know for sure how close it is to another eruption, there are conflicting opinions, but the sheer amount of seismic activity in that region makes me nervous.

reply to post by PuterMan


Thanks for that additional information on the different measurement scales. It was late, I was tired, and couldn't focus enough to explain it clearly..

Take a moment and review this post..
Somewhats add to the over all picture,
I suspect more to come!

Odd Earthquakes

www.iris.edu...

Damn, allot of movement going on here!

reply to post by jessemole


Yeah. That entire Indonesian circle has been really active in the last 10 days. Just across Indonesia from last nights episode was the 7.5 from a couple days earlier.

Look out for a big quake in either Santa Cruz Cali or Baja. Most likely Baja but with all the shaking that has been going on their it seems to be relieving its stress in a good way instead of one big bang.

Alaska's looking lively, too....

6.6 just popped up inland of where earlier todays quake hit. Shallower too and the USGS predicted shakemap doesn't look that great for any structured buildings near to Nabire.

I see nothing coming through for 6.6... there was a 6.6 yesterday but nothing today

Oops my bad, scrap that then, I just noticed the date on the USGS Email. For some reason it was still in my inbox and I assumed it was a new shock.