The Earthquake Museum
Tectonic forces, seismic waves, and the science of predicting the unpredictable. Explore live data, trace 2,000 years of seismology, and see how we build for survival.
Live Earthquake Map
Past 7 days, M4+ from the USGS. Halo size scales with magnitude; halo softness with depth. Pulse rings mark events within the last 24 hours.
The Collection
34 artifacts spanning 2,000 years of earthquake science — from Zhang Heng’s seismoscope to modern early warning systems. Click any card to copy its description.
No artifacts in this category.
Two Thousand Years of Seismology
Key milestones from 132 AD to the 2020s — scroll to trace the history of how we learned to read the Earth.
Hands-on Instruments
Read the Richter scale as energy, walk the plate boundaries, and watch the world’s seismographs in real time.
Hover a boundary to read its kinematics. Chevrons show relative motion type.
| Trace | Mag | Location | Depth | Time |
|---|
Click a row to locate the event on the hero map. Trace sparkline is a stylized P→S decay; this is not a real waveform.