Moment magnitude scale characterizing some classes of quakes. As a result, Beno Gutenberg expanded Richter's work to consider earthquakes detected at distant locations. For such large distances the higher frequency vibrations are attenuated and seismic surface waves (Rayleigh and Love waves) are dominated by waves with a period of 20 seconds, corresponding to a wavelength of about 60 km. Their magnitude was assigned a surface wave magnitude scale (). Gutenberg also combined compressional P-waves and the transverse S-waves (which he termed "body waves") to create a body-wave magnitude scale (), measured for periods between 1 and 10 seconds. Ultimately Gutenberg and Richter collaborated
Moment magnitude scale band. To simplify this calculation, he noted that the lowest frequency parts of the spectrum can often be used to estimate the rest of the spectrum. The lowest frequency asymptote of a seismic spectrum is characterized by the seismic moment, . Using an approximate relation between radiated energy and seismic moment (which assumes stress drop is complete and ignores fracture energy), (where E is in Joules and is in Nformula_4m), Kanamori approximated by The formula above made it much easier to estimate the energy-based magnitude , but it changed the fundamental nature of the scale into a moment magnitude scale.