Japan's 8.9 has just been ungraded to 9.0

Sorry, don't know if this has been posted yet but according the the USGS website, the recent Japan earthquake has been upgraded to 9.0.
Just wondering how much more powerful the difference is? Does anyone with that kind of background have any idea how much more powerful this makes it?
I think I read somewhere that each step on the scale is 100 times stronger that the next?

Several threads have had this posted. I posted it in one as well.

I just posted it too...!!

A lot of quake watchers around!!

reply to post by SMR


Thanks, I looked and didn't see that this has been posted. Still wondering how much more powerful is and 8.0 vs 9.0

Originally posted by starwatcher1
reply to post by SMR

 

Thanks, I looked and didn't see that this has been posted. Still wondering how much more powerful is and 8.0 vs 9.0

I believe it's a logarithmic scale: 9.0 is 1000 times as strong as an 8.0.
Anyway, it was upgraded from 8.9 to 9.0.

reply to post by this_is_who_we_are

Thanks for the information. That would mean that upgrade of the earthquake would make it 100 times more powerful that the 8.9... Both bad news

Someone posted the actual numbers couple days ago, think Zorgon or Phage, but anyways, the difference was somewhere in the range of 130 maga tons of TNT. (approx: 8.9 = 350 mega tons, 9.0 = 480 mega tons)

reply to post by starwatcher1


the maths dont quite work out that way but it is probably closer to around 10 times the magnitude.

Wikipedia has a good list of the relative strength of earthquakes at different magnitudes:

Magnitude // Approximate TNT for Seismic Energy Yield // Joule equivalent // Example

0.5 // 84.4 g (2.98 oz) // 355 kJ // Large hand grenade
1.0 // 474 g (1.05 lb) // 2.00 MJ // Construction site blast
2.0 // 15.0 kg (33.1 lb) // 63.1 MJ // Late World War II conventional bombs
3.0 // 474 kg (1.05×103 lb) // 2.00 GJ // Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb (MOAB)
4.0 // 15.0 metric tons // 63.1 GJ // Small atomic bomb
5.0 // 474 metric tons // 2.00 TJ // Nagasaki atomic bomb (Total yield including air yield 21 kT, 88 TJ)
6.0 // 15.0 kilotons // 63.1 TJ // Double Spring Flat earthquake (Nevada, USA), 1994
7.0 // 474 kilotons // 2.00 PJ // Haiti earthquake, 2010
8.0 // 15.0 megatons // 63.1 PJ // San Francisco earthquake (California, USA), 1906
9.0 // 474 megatons // 2.00 EJ // Japan earthquake 2011
12.5 // 100 teratons // 400 ZJ // Yucatán Peninsula impact (creating Chicxulub crater, killed off dinosaurs)
23.0 // 4.2×1029 tons // 1.3×1039 J // Approximate magnitude of the starquake on the magnetar SGR 1806-20