Moment magnitude scale magnitude corresponds to a 10 ≈ 32 times increase in the amount of energy released, and an increase of two steps corresponds to a 10 = 1000 times increase in energy. Thus, an earthquake of of 7.0 contains 1000 times as much energy as one of 5.0 and about 32 times that of 6.0. The moment magnitude (>) scale was introduced to address the shortcomings of the Richter scale (detailed above) while maintaining consistency. Thus, for medium-sized earthquakes, the moment magnitude values should be similar to Richter values. That is, a magnitude 5.0 earthquake will be about a 5.0 on
Magnitude (astronomy) by astronomers are: The difference between these concepts can be seen by comparing two stars. Betelgeuse (apparent magnitude 0.5, absolute magnitude −5.8) appears slightly dimmer in the sky than Alpha Centauri (apparent magnitude 0.0, absolute magnitude 4.4) even though it emits thousands of times more light, because Betelgeuse is much farther away. Under the modern logarithmic magnitude scale, two objects, one of which is used as a reference or baseline, whose intensities (brightnesses) measured from Earth in units of power per unit area (such as watts per square metre, W m) are and , will have magnitudes and related by