Over the weekend, an 8.8-magnitude earthquake rocked Chile, killing over 700 people. How is it that an 8.8 earthquake is 500 times more powerful than the 7.0 quake that devastated Haiti? How important is the depth of the earthquake below the earth’s surface? What determines the size and severity of a tsunami? Is the U.S. in danger of suffering a major quake? We ask Paul Caruso, geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center.
