What does “moment magnitude” mean, and how do scientists determine the strength of a rupture in the earth? By Henry Fountain Henry Fountain spent a quarter century covering science for The Times. He ...

We know an earthquake is severe when it has a high magnitude number. The 1985 quake that devastated Mexico City was an 8. The quake that shook central Mexico this week was a 7.1. But what exactly is ...

Kerry Breen is a news editor at CBSNews.com. A graduate of New York University's Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism, she previously worked at NBC News' TODAY Digital. She covers current events, ...

Just how strong was Wednesday’s earthquake anyhow? The quake that struck about 11 miles south southwest of Mifflintown in Juniata County measured 3.4 on the Richter scale, with weak-to-light shaking ...

The Seattle earthquake registered 6.8 on the … well, not on the Richter scale, which the New York Times reported has been displaced. Is the Richter scale obsolete, and what is used instead? While the ...

The earthquake that rattled Californians on Friday night measured a 7.1 magnitude, which doesn’t sound much worse than the 6.4-magnitude quake that struck a day earlier. But it was. The small ...

Scientists measure both the energy released in an earthquake and its damage. In 1902, Italian scientist Giuseppe Mercalli introduced a scale that measures the intensity of an earthquake based on its ...

Here’s five things you may not know about Richter. Richter was a Buckeye, born in Hamilton near Cincinnati in 1900. After his parents divorced, his grandfather raised him in California. He lived until ...

OLYMPIC PENINSULA, Wash. — An earthquake registering on the Richter scale at a magnitude of 3.6 shook the northern parts of the Olympic Peninsula late Sunday night. At 11:25 p.m., the quake shook ...

SNYDER, Texas — A 4.9 magnitude earthquake shook the Big Country Monday evening. A resident in Snyder said there was only one way to describe how it felt. "It felt like destruction," said Irving Wells ...