What Are Earthquakes?

     In light of the recent Turkey-Syria earthquake, it’s time to better understand what earthquakes really are. When most people think about earthquakes, they imagine the ground shaking ferociously and a bunch of buildings collapsing. While this is true, it’s a heavy oversimplification of what an earthquake really is. An earthquake is caused by tectonic plates sliding past one another. Sometimes, a huge amount of pressure is built up at the point where two tectonic plates meet. When this massive amount of pressure is released, seismic waves occur. These waves spread through the Earth by rippling outward, which shakes the ground. The way scientists measure the impact of an earthquake is through the Richter scale. The largest earthquake in history was the 1960 Chile earthquake, which reached a magnitude of 9.5. The Earthquake in Turkey and Syria measured at 7.8 during its initial stages, which is equivalent to 7 million tons of TNT. So far, the death total has surpassed 46,000 and the earthquake is now the 10th most costly disaster in history.

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Sources: https://www.usgs.gov/programs/earthquake-hazards/science-earthquakes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disasters_by_cost https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/18/earthquake-death-toll-surpasses-46000-in-syria-turkey