Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for September 04, 2018

So how many survivors were there in that 1942 Greenlandic plane wreck which include the rescue planes?

What was the magnitude of the quake when a Mars-sized object struck the Earth four billion years ago and created the Moon? I should think that might be a Ten.

A magnitude 10 earthquake has never been recorded. But in theory it can happen. The biggest earthquake ever recorded was a magnitude 9.5. It occurred in 1960 in Chile, where the Nazca plate subducts under the South American plate. There is no theoretical limit to the magnitude of an earthquake, although it is estimated that an earthquake of magnitude 11 would split the Earth in two.

Earthquake researchers in Japan (who see a lot of quakes) disagree. A magnitude 10 is possible, but not likely.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2012/12/15/national/magnitude-10-temblor-could-happen-study/#.W45aHsA0lEY

A 10 is impossible as long as there is a Russian judge on the panel.

The depths people will go to kill sharks.

Did the depth charges work on the sharks? Did they stop attacking humans?

Those seismologists have never traveled with my ex mother-in-law.

So a magnitude 10 earthquake possible but it’s extremely unlikely. Earthquakes are caused by the sudden slippage of faults, and their magnitude is partly based on the length of those faults. No known faults are long enough to generate a mega-quake of 10 or more. (The largest quake ever recorded was a magnitude 9.5.)

Ha! Not if the earthquake measuring apparatus malfunctions!

Kind of like Warp 10 – impossible in theory

Three examples of overkill…

It’s extremely unlikely, but NOT impossible.

Here’s Ripley giving more and more incorrect information just for shock value’s sake.

The old Richter scale is logarithmic. So a magnitude 8 was supposed to mean as much shaking as if 6 million tons of TNT were exploded in the epicenter, 9 would be like 60 million tons, and the theoretical 10 (which Richter at one point thought would be impossible) would be like 600 million tons of TNT blowing up at the epicenter. [Notice – that quantity of TNT would not fit in the epicenter of any quake – hence, again – thought to be impossible :)]

Later it was decided (since discredited, also) it would take 6 billion tons (magnitude 11) to blow up the earth, so Richter’s scale became open-ended to take future possibilities into account.

Richter’s scale was created based on the quakes in California. Other areas have other types of quakes (here are just two-examples: some have more S-waves, some have more P-waves, etc). So the Moment Magnitude Scale was an attempt to fit more types onto one scale. It started out open-ended.

“NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE!” – Shia LaBeouf

Depth charges huh? I heard when one’s detonated it kills all fish in a three mile radius;/

I have a house going up for sale, here on the San Francisco Peninsula soon, why not buy it and find out for sure… Were only six miles from the San Andreas fault, and fourteen miles from the Hayward fault -both long over due….