5 most recent earthquakes at EXACTLY 10km depth..

What do you think is the cause of these earthquakes .... yes I know its the plates shifting but whats causing these at this exact depth all over the world??

Other earthquake threads have addressed this. 10 is the number used if geologists haven't figured out yet how far down the quake actually happened.

I don't understand all this quake stuff (frankly) but i read in GPL that some quakes get the 10km mark when they can't confirm data or something similar.

Maybe someone can confirm this.

But yeah, saw that 4 quakes last days had the 10km mark.

OK so how can they pinpoint a quake 100s of km down and not one at 10km.... sounds an odd reason. Especially when its only of recent months they have been so frequent and scattered at this depth and also no smaller ones at this depth either?

It would seem more logical and accurate to simply state depth unknown then to simply put 10km. I too find it hard to believe that they wouldn't have this information when they can identify quakes happening 100's of miles below the surface.

I agree with you... Look at the 10 km with the Haiti aftershocks... scores and scores of them... trying to hold the planet together i guess, or trying to break it apart... either way, good luck with that!

in case you guys didn't see the above post...10km is the default depth that usgs uses when they don't know the depth or are not willing to disclose it. if you watch the new quakes as they roll in, you will see many of them show this and then later get changed.

10 km is a "fixed depth". Sometimes data are too poor to compute a reliable depth for an earthquake. In such a case, the depth is assigned to be 10 km. In many areas around the world, reliable depths tend to average 10 km or close to it. For example, if we made a histogram of the reliable depths in such an area, we'd expect to see a peak around 10 km. Thus, if we don't know the depth, 10 km is a reasonable guess. We used to use 33 km. Increased understanding indicates that 10 km is more likely. Some areas, like subduction zones, are known to have many earthquakes much deeper than 10 km. In those areas, probably a larger fixed depth would be appropriate. The most common reason for having to fix the depth is that the earthquake occurred too far from the nearest seismic station. A useful rule of thumb is that a reliable depth requires that the distance from the epicenter to the nearest station must be less than the depth of the earthquake. Modern computational and theoretical advances can now produce reliable depths at greater distances from the nearest station, so the rule of thumb does not always apply nowadays. However, the rule of thumb does illustrate one conclusion: fixed depths are more common for shallow earthquakes than for deep ones.

Thanks for this good explaination!

This is all nice but maybe there are some people who don't necessarily believe the government. [link to earthquake.usgs.gov]

IIRC most of the earthquakes from 2001 until now have the same depth. So don't tell me that all this technological and scientific advancement can only be used to tell us things like maybe or probably. Just my 2cents.