It's breaking news, so more information should come through soon.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- A strong earthquake measuring 7.9 in magnitude struck Wednesday near southern Indonesia, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The earthquake, which struck at 1810 local time (1110 GMT) Bengkulu province, Sumatra, has caused buildings to sway in Indonesia's capital city, Jakarta, but there are no reports of damage.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/09/12/indonesia.quake/index.html

A strong earthquake measuring 7.9 in magnitude

isnt that like absolutely full on. i thought around 8 was just crazy town.

no damage..? E-arthquake?

Not really sure, I believe the earthquake responsible for causing the boxing day tsunami was around the 9 mark, but I imagine 7.9 would be pretty damaging too?

tsunami on the way?

Boxing day Tsunami was caused by a 9+ quake. Still, as the link said, a tsunami watch was immediately issued this time.

Major 7.0-7.9 Can cause serious damage over larger areas. 18 per year

It's an exponential scale as far as I know. 1>2 not much difference, but 7.9 > 9 is a huge difference.

the tsunami warning website has crapped out, I'm sure that's helping people

a 7 is ten times more powerful than a 6, an 8 is ten more times powerful than a 7 etc etc using the Richter scale.

The way I see it a 7 is scary, an 8 is dangerous and a 9 is biblical.

9 is biblical.

No, 9's are based on scientific fact, not a work of fiction

I gotta change my sig, I haven't played BF2 in months

I'm not sure if you were trying to be funny or not.

fpot its a log scale, but not log base ten.

Each successive whole number is 32 times that of the previous whole number interms of energy involved.

Oh and pulled from Wikipedia: the Boxing Day tsunami earthquake was a 9.3, and equivalent to 32 gigatons of TNT going up :)

*EDIT* Wait up, it seems that there is two measures in use, energy released is a log base whatever and increases by 32 per whole number, but the movement involved is a log base ten per level. Hmm.

last edited by StopShootingMe at 00:14:58 13/Sep/07

That'll learn me for trying to sound clever :(

Nah I just got nailed by that dastardly Wikipedia. I hate that site so much.

*EDIT* In the ABC article for this quake they have reported "...Earthquakes of over 8.0 magnitude are the most violent on the scale."

It's an open ended scale, gotta love the research the ABC put into their journalism :) Seriously, ten seconds on the net and they could have avoided that one.


last edited by StopShootingMe at 01:21:02 13/Sep/07