Seismologist Susan Hough has suggested that a magnitude 10 quake may represent a very approximate upper limit for what the Earth's tectonic zones are capable of, which would be the result of the largest known continuous belt of faults rupturing together (along the Pacific coast of the Americas).[17] A research at the Tohoku University in Japan found that a magnitude 10 earthquake was theoretically possible if a combined 3,000 kilometres (1,900 mi) of faults from the Japan Trench to the Kuril–Kamchatka Trench ruptured together and moved by 60 metres (200 ft) (or if a similar large-scale rupture occurred elsewhere). Such an earthquake would cause ground motions for up to an hour, with tsunamis hitting shores while the ground is still shaking, and if this kind of earthquake occurred, it would probably be a 1-in-10,000-year event.[18]
So a 10 could be like, if California decides to finally go walkabout. Physically possible, but the sheer amount of movement a part of the crust would need to experience is very unlikely and therefore a scale measuring that or above isn't needed.
I even heard that nine-point-something is pretty much the limit because the rock just can’t store enough energy to go beyond ten, resulting in earthquakes before it hits that mark.
However, if you got the energy into the system from outside, it’s very possible to cross that line. The dinosaur asteroid supposedly resulted in a quake up to 11 on the Richter scale.
So… Is it likely? No. But the scale doesn’t end at 10.
It’s so refreshing to hear this. Even when I was less educated, his smugness annoyed me SO MUCH that it made me feel like “If actual cosmologists are like this, I couldn’t stand them anyway.” It made science and the community feel very unattractive, since his marketing puts him all over the place where the tag “science” appears.
He talks like a fedora-sporting moderator from a ~2006 atheist-reason-rational-skeptics-or-else forum. As if he personally has already unlocked all the secrets of the universe and if your sci-fi movie isn’t perfectly adhering to known science you’re an absolute buffoon.
Sadly Bill Nye seems kinda similar, and I even got to meet him in person. He was rather irked that people wanted to get pictures and autographs with him long before the symposium even started. (Despite being lauded as a hero by countless inquisitive children and all)
TL;DR: Despite the unrelenting tide of anti-intellect, I’m glad there’s a lot of serious scientists who aren’t just in it to lord it over everybody else.
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