Charles Francis Richter of magnitude 7 would be ten times stronger than a 6, a hundred times stronger than a 5, and a thousand times stronger than a 4. (The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that shook San Francisco was magnitude 6.9.) The Richter scale was published in 1935 and immediately became the standard measure of earthquake intensity. Richter did not seem concerned that Gutenberg's name was not included at first; but in later years, after Gutenberg was already dead, Richter began to insist for his colleague to be recognized for expanding the scale to apply to earthquakes all over the globe, not just
Absolute magnitude corresponds to absolute bolometric magnitude 4.74. Placing a radiation source (e.g. star) at the standard distance of 10 parsecs, it follows that the zero point of the apparent bolometric magnitude scale corresponds to irradiance . Using the IAU 2015 scale, the nominal total solar irradiance ("solar constant") measured at 1 astronomical unit () corresponds to an apparent bolometric magnitude of the Sun of −26.832. Following Resolution B2, the relation between a star's absolute bolometric magnitude and its luminosity is no longer directly tied to the Sun's (variable) luminosity: where The new IAU absolute magnitude scale permanently disconnects the scale from