Moment magnitude scale released, and an increase of two steps corresponds to a 10 (1,000) times increase in energy. Thus, an earthquake of "M" of 7.0 releases about 32 times as much energy as one of 6.0 and nearly 1,000 times one of 5.0. The moment magnitude is based on the seismic moment of the earthquake, which is equal to the shear modulus of the rock near the fault multiplied by the average amount of slip on the fault and the size of the area that slipped. Since January 2002, the MMS has been the scale used by the United States Geological Survey
Richter magnitude scale distance of the station, formula_23. In practice, readings from all observing stations are averaged after adjustment with station-specific corrections to obtain the formula_2 value. Because of the logarithmic basis of the scale, each whole number increase in magnitude represents a tenfold increase in measured amplitude; in terms of energy, each whole number increase corresponds to an increase of about 31.6 times the amount of energy released, and each increase of 0.2 corresponds to approximately a doubling of the energy released. Events with magnitudes greater than 4.5 are strong enough to be recorded by a seismograph anywhere in the world, so