On May 22, 1960, a devastating earthquake hit southern Chile.. For 10 minutes, the ground shook so hard that people could not stand on their feet.. Cracks formed on the roads, buildings collapsed. The earthquake in Vildivia was a magnitude 9.5, the strongest on record. But can such shocks be even more powerful The answer to this question leads edition of Live Science.

According to geologists, the answer to this question is yes.. But the probability of earthquakes with a magnitude higher than 9.5 is unlikely. For this to happen, a very long and very deep fracture of a huge fragment of the earth's crust must occur..

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According to geologist Wendy Bohon, a magnitude 9.5 earthquake is likely to be the most powerful that can occur on Earth.. Magnitude 10 is very unlikely.

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Magnitude is a measure of the amount of energy released by an earthquake.. It may differ from how an earthquake is felt on the surface, since in this case the strength depends on the distance to the epicenter and the condition of the earth.. The same earthquake can feel differently for those standing on loose soil or sand than for those on firm ground..

The magnitude of an earthquake depends on the total area of \u200b\u200bthe rupture. And it, in turn, depends on how deep the fault goes into the earth's crust, and the length of the broken segment horizontally. There are physical limits to how large an area can collapse. The deepest faults are found in subduction zones, where one tectonic plate pushes another.. Although earthquakes can sometimes occur as deep as 800 kilometers below the Earth's surface, according to the US Geological Survey, most deep earthquakes do not generate large shaking at the surface.. The most dangerous for people are those that are in the upper tens of kilometers of the earth's crust..

According to Heidi Houston, an earthquake geologist at the University of Southern California, the faults that can cause the most destructive earthquakes are oblique faults in subduction zones.. They are called dipping because they are at an oblique angle rather than vertically, they have the largest areas of rocks that can get stuck in each other, building up stress and then finally collapsing..

There are also physical limits on the size of a segment that can " Even faults in subduction zones do not collapse immediately.

Another factor that affects the magnitude is how much the fault shifts or shifts.. As a rule, smaller areas of collapse move a shorter distance than larger ones.. That is, in an earthquake of magnitude 5, the rock can slip a few centimeters - a distance that is unlikely to break the earth above - in an earthquake of magnitude 9, the fault can move a distance of about 20 meters or more. The 1960 Chile earthquake actually expanded the country's territory due to the way the land stretched..

According to scientists, the difference between a magnitude 8 earthquake and a magnitude 9 earthquake in terms of released energy is much larger than the difference between a magnitude 5 earthquake and a magnitude 6 earthquake.. Increasing the magnitude of an earthquake from 9.5 to 9.6 requires much more fracture area than increasing the magnitude from 5.5 to 5.6.

That is, the earthquake in Chile was almost twice as powerful as the next earthquake in Alaska with a magnitude of 9.2.