Error Comparing Earthquake Intensity with “500 Atomic Bombs”

that shook our country deeply Kahramanmaras earthquakebrought with it great destruction. After that, we saw that analogies were made in many places in order to understand the magnitude of the earthquake. It would not be wrong to say that the atomic bomb was the most common among them.

It must be said from the beginning; Since there is no standard atomic bomb “earthquake x was the size of an atomic bomb‘ is not very consistent. Because, in history, we have seen bombs that emitted a higher level of energy than the energy emitted by the Kahramanmaraş earthquake. What will change when we look specifically?

One of the most confusing topics on social media:

The vast majority is the energy released by the explosion effect. on the surfaceif the earthquake-induced one underground It misses the fact that it appeared.

In addition, while making the said comparison, explosives in a small area While the earthquake releases a huge energy, the earthquake over a wide area Don’t forget to spread it. This prevents the energy from being felt in one place and very strongly.

Therefore, we do not see the effect of atomic bombs in the earthquake zone.

Because, as we said, both the spread of energy over a wide area and damping aforementioned. However, when seismic waves are taken into account, the energy released at the end of the day does not change.

In other words, the amount of energy is determined not according to the destruction, but according to the data received from the seismic waves.

On the Richter scale, the intensity between earthquakes is not 1, but 10 units.

In other words, a magnitude 7 earthquake is 10 times greater than a magnitude 6 earthquake. to the size gets it. The violence progresses as 30 units. 6 to 7 magnitude earthquakes. intensities It means there are 30 times between.

So, the energy released by this earthquake is 500 times that of which bomb?

little boy

The energy released with the Kahramanmaraş earthquake 32 petajoules displayed as. to Hiroshima If the bomb thrown is a Little Boy bomb 0.063 petajoules He had the energy. Considering that 1000 terajoules equals 1 petajoule, the energy released in the earthquake is even more than 500 times the energy released by Little Boy.

On the other hand, the energy released by the Tsar bomb of Russia, 210 petajoules were at their level.

This means more than 6.5 times the energy that occurred in the Kahramanmaraş earthquake.

But the equivalent of this energy on the Richter scale is about with a magnitude of 8.1 seen as an earthquake. However, it should be noted that since the bomb is activated in the air, the energy is not converted into seismic waves.

The reason why atomic bombs and earthquakes of the same intensity do not cause the same destruction is that, as we have mentioned before, earthquakes absorb this energy. in one place we can say that they do not collect but distribute to a large area, take place under the ground, and therefore the earth absorbs a certain amount of the energy in question.

resources: Open Hazards, USGS