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Incidentally, the usual designation of the magnitude scale to my name does less than justice to the great part that Dr. Gutenberg played in extending the scale to apply to earthquakes in all parts of the world.

Energy is a concept that has been coined by physicists. There is no observable thing known as energy anywhere.

If the assumptions used in calculating energy are changed, then this seriously affects the final result, even though the same body of data might be used.

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

What emerged, of course, was that the magnitude scale presupposed that all earthquakes were alike except for a constant scaling factor. And this proved to be closer to the truth than we expected.

As seismologists gained more experience from earthquake records, it became obvious that the problem could not be reduced to a single peak acceleration. In fact, a full frequency of vibrations occurs.

Whenever we witness art in a building, we are aware of an energy contained by it.

Each year, at the typical nuclear reactor in the U.S., there's a 1 in 74,176 chance of an earthquake strong enough to cause damage to the reactor's core, which could expose the public to radiation. No tsunami required.

Energy begets energy.

It is strange to reflect how much energy is thrown away in attempting to know the unknowable.