Talk:Quake (natural phenomenon)

The sunquake is listed as having magnitude 11.4, while the San Francisco earthquakes had magnitude 7.9. Magnitude 11.4 is about 126,000 times more powerful than magnitude 7.9 not 40,000 as claimed in the article. 49.145.109.75 (talk) 03:30, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Quake Nomenclature
Having different names for earthquakes on different planets (eg, marsquake) is insane. They should all be called earthquakes. Earthquake contains the word 'earth' but this should be irrelevant to its definition. Earthquake contains the world 'earth' because the word originated from the planet earth, which is where humans originated. And so planet Earth was the place where earthquakes were first observed and named. However, these same geological symptoms do occur on other planets, and hence do not need to be assigned a new name. Instead making up a new word for an earthquake on Mars, why not just call it 'an earthquake on mars'. Its like having a different word for the 'atmosphere' for every planet, instead of just using the word 'atmosphere'. (eg, like saying: Mars doesnt have an atmosphere, it has a marsosphere) Ok, the atmospheric composition for each planet is different, but you can still refer to them all as 'atmosphere'. Same thing = same word. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.146.204.91 (talk) 20:07, 1 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree. Molten planetary cores will produce tectonic effects, up to and including including volcanoes and "planetquakes". Venusquake...c'mon! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.111.40.194 (talk) 21:31, 1 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I take a slightly different view. We call the soil on our planet Earth "earth", and that is what we consider as quaking when an earth quake occurs. We certainly don't call them Earthquakes, since the entire Earth does not quake at one time. We don't have a name for the soil of other planets, (stars don't have soil anyway, and neither do the gas giants) so, until we do (well, I guess we have "moon-dust"), we should continue to be arrogant and call quakes on other solid planets, "earthquakes". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mezmeriseu (talk • contribs) 11:12, 11 July 2010 (UTC)


 * In my view, Wikipedia is not about what we would like something to be, it should reflect what is generally regarded as correct by the community at large, even if you personally disagree with something. If you search Google for the term marsquake, you are offered many tens of thousand of pages including a large number of science and astronomy websites - only one of which is the Wikipedia page for this article. Same goes for venusquake, although admittedly with not quite as many page hits, but still in the thousands. Clearly there are enough people in the astroscience community who feel the terms marsquake or venusquake are legitimate, and therefore Wikipedia articles should referred to them as such for those who come here looking for the information. To spell that out - imagine you are a school student doing a project and you come across the unfamiliar term marsquake while researching the red planet. You will most likely turn to Wikipedia for the explanation, and hence why it should be here. Peter b (talk) 21:45, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree, this seems ridiculous. Yes, words such as "marsquake" are used as well, but if you Google "earthquake on Mars", you will also get results that call it an earthquake. Both are used in practice. If "earthquake" is really only supposed to refer to "quakes" on Earth, then most usages of the word "earthquake" on Wikipedia (in articles related to seismography etc) should be changed to "quake" because they're not restricted to the Earth. That would just be silly looking, less clear/readable, and I doubt such changes would even be accepted, so this way, most of the usage will remain incorrect or at least needlessly restricted to Earth. Neme12 (talk) 01:34, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Lead Section Definition
The introductory definition for Quake was previously substandard, so I expanded and modified it based on my own knowledge of the topic. The reference I linked to is the USGS earthquakes general information page, which refers to a number of articles about the phenomenon of earthquakes in particular, but the principles apply equally well to other celestial bodies, with the exception of starquakes. If somebody can link to a more appropriate reference, please do so. Peter b (talk) 21:45, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

SGR 1806-20 starquake
The article claims the starquake detected on December 27, 2004 from the ultracompact stellar corpse SGR 1806-20 was energy equivalent to a magnitude 32 quake. My reading of the reference given does not make it clear that the magnitude 32 quake referred to SGR 1806-20, or to large starquakes in theory. A calculation of mine (based on 1E40 Joules and the formula log10(Energy-in-joules)=1.5*Magnitude+4.8) came up with the energy equivalent of a 23.5 magnitude quake. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kdpw (talk • contribs) 23:09, 20 September 2019 (UTC)