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 ...

Earthquakes are measured on the Richter scale. It was named after Charles Richter, who in 1935 developed a mathematical scale of measuring the relative size of quakes. On the Richter scale, magnitude ...

An earthquake rattled much of the Northeast on Friday morning, with shaking felt across the New York City metropolitan area and in communities from Baltimore and Philadelphia up through New England.

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 ...