What Do Earthquake Magnitudes Mean?

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Whenever there's an earthquake you'll hear all over the media that it's "(blank number) on the Richter Scale." Surprise, the Richter Scale was abandoned years ago because it was inaccurate. Today we use the moment magnitude scale, or the MMS. The MMS measures movement in three directions: north/south, east/west and, and vertical (up/down). Like the Richter Scale, it's logarithmic, which, in English means that a small numeric bump equates to a serious increase in the violence with which the Earth shakes. That's probably why most people (and many media outlets) haven't noticed that it's a whole new metric.  more...