Live earthquake map — today’s quakes on a real globe
Spin the planet and press play: the earthquakes of the past 30 days light up in the order they struck, right up to the most recent one. Switch periods for a year, or for every devastating quake since 1900 — with plate boundaries, country borders and real daylight.
Drag to rotate · scroll or pinch to zoom · click a larger dot for details. The default basemap is our own map texture (277 kB); the satellite view (imagery from 2026-08-17) and the sharper variants only download on request.
Earthquakes today — the largest recent quakes
The largest earthquake of the past 48 hours: M5.8 — 72 km E of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia (Aug 17, 12:10 UTC). The table lists the strongest recent events from the USGS catalog; the map above carries all 2,206 quakes of the past 30 days.
| Magnitude | Location | Depth | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| M5.8 | 72 km E of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia | 55 km | Aug 17, 12:10 UTC |
| M5.5 | 62 km NNW of Ende, Indonesia | 16 km | Aug 17, 01:10 UTC |
| M5.4 | 75 km N of Ruteng, Indonesia | 10 km | Aug 17, 11:10 UTC |
| M5.3 | 68 km NNW of Ende, Indonesia | 10 km | Aug 17, 03:10 UTC |
| M5.3 | 24 km ENE of Colonia, Micronesia | 10 km | Aug 17, 23:10 UTC |
| M5.2 | 67 km WSW of Puerto Madero, Mexico | 35 km | Aug 16, 16:10 UTC |
| M5.2 | 70 km NNW of Ende, Indonesia | 16 km | Aug 17, 04:10 UTC |
| M5.2 | 81 km N of Ruteng, Indonesia | 10 km | Aug 17, 11:10 UTC |
| M5.1 | 28 km SW of Kandrian, Papua New Guinea | 35 km | Aug 17, 11:10 UTC |
| M5.1 | Kuril Islands | 94 km | Aug 17, 21:10 UTC |
| M5.0 | 32 km N of Ruteng, Indonesia | 10 km | Aug 17, 14:10 UTC |
| M4.9 | South Atlantic Ocean | 10 km | Aug 16, 17:10 UTC |
Times are UTC. Fresh magnitudes are automatic estimates and may be revised by USGS analysts.
What does the globe show that a flat map cannot?
Most of Earth's seismic activity is concentrated in a single, continuous ring around the Pacific Ocean — the Ring of Fire. On an ordinary world map this is invisible, because the projection cuts the image exactly in the middle of the Pacific, at the ±180th meridian: one half of the ring ends up on the right edge of the map, the other on the left, looking like two separate arcs.
Rotate the globe so the Pacific faces you — and turn on the plate boundaries. The dots sit almost exactly on the lines. That is the main claim of this page, and you do not have to take our word for it: you can check it yourself.
The globe view is an orthographic projection: the Earth as seen from very far away. Things look compressed toward the edge of the disc — that is not a bug, that is what a sphere looks like.
Colors and sizes
Color is focal depth. Red means shallow (0–70 km), orange and yellow intermediate (70–300 km), blue and violet deep (below 300 km). Deep quakes are interesting because they only occur where one plate subducts beneath another: their colors show which way the diving plate dips. Along Japan and the west coast of South America this is spectacularly visible.
Size is magnitude. Magnitude is logarithmic: an M7 releases roughly thirty times more energy than an M6, not twice as much. Dot sizes therefore grow at an accelerating rate — otherwise M2.5 and M8 would be the same little dot.
The shockwave ring bursts out of a dot when playback reaches the moment of that quake. It is a visual cue, not a measurement — real seismic waves do not propagate like that; the ring only marks which event just happened.
Where the data comes from — 82 live seismographs
Every earthquake on this page was detected by real instruments in the ground. We stream the live waveforms of 82 seismograph stations in 31 countries — from Greenland to Antarctica — courtesy of the GEOFON global network and the Hungarian national network. You can open any station and watch how the ground is shaking there right now.
Frequently asked questions
Why a globe instead of a flat map?
Because the main pattern of world seismicity — the Pacific Ring of Fire — is one continuous ring around the Earth, and flat world maps cut it in half exactly there, at the ±180th meridian. On the usual map it looks like two separate arcs, one on each edge. On the globe it is one ring. The flat view is also available on this page, because it is more convenient for searching details.
What do the dot colors mean?
The FOCAL DEPTH: how deep the quake originated. Red is shallow (0–70 km), orange is intermediate (70–300 km), blue and violet are deep (below 300 km). This is not decoration: deep quakes only occur where one tectonic plate dives under another, so the colors show which way the subducting plate dips. The SIZE of a dot is the magnitude — and since magnitude is logarithmic, so is the size.
Why do the earthquakes trace out the plate boundaries?
Because the vast majority of earthquakes happen where tectonic plates meet: that is where they move relative to each other and where stress accumulates. Turn on the plate boundaries layer and you will see the dots sit almost exactly on the lines. Where they do not — for example inside China — those are intraplate quakes, rarer but well known.
Where does the data come from, and is it reliable?
From the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program catalog, one of the reference sources worldwide. As a work of the U.S. federal government it is in the public domain. Fresh events come from automatic processing and their magnitude may still be revised after expert review — that is normal, and true of every catalog.
Why is not every earthquake shown?
Because there are thousands of tiny, instrument-only quakes every day, and back to 1900 that would be millions of events: the page would be undownloadable and the pattern would drown in noise. Each period therefore uses its own magnitude floor — M2.5 for 30 days, M4.5 for a year, M6 and M7 for the decades. Every view states which floor it uses.
How much data does the page download?
The default basemap is our own map texture (277 kB) — it is sharper and about one-eighth the size of the equivalent satellite image. The satellite view and the high-resolution variants only download when you ask for them — their size is written on the buttons.
This site was built by Digital Dynamics Kft.
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