Faultlines · Earth in motion

A catalog, in motion.

Current shows all returned earthquake origins in the chosen rolling window, with no magnitude cutoff. The default is 24 hours. It refreshes every minute while visible. Catalog coverage varies; no interval is guaranteed to contain events.

Day playback reveals origins in timestamp order and retains them until the loop resets. A complete UTC day takes 60 seconds (1440×). Today stops at the latest retrieval time: its partial interval plays at the same speed with no future events.

Rings mark surface epicenters. Magnitude controls color, extent and layering: teal below 3, gold 3–5, coral 5–7, rose 7+; grey is unknown. Depth stays in the record. Visible origins repeat outward rings, fading with distance inside their magnitude-set extent. Playback begins at each recorded origin; Current keeps all retained events pulsing. Phase survives refresh. Pace and extent are illustrative, not wave travel, energy or physical influence.

The globe turns once per minute when motion is enabled. Recent-event attention eases within the same orbit controller. Notable days frame their verified region once, then keep the camera manual while playback continues. In other views, manual orbit temporarily holds spin and attention; event selection holds attention until Resume globe. Reduced motion starts with rotation, automatic attention and autoplay off.

Data: USGS summary feeds and ComCat. Coastlines: Natural Earth 1:50m, public domain. Wireframe is a geographic reference, not tectonic boundaries.

Preferred origins can be revised. Missing uncertainty is unknown. This is exploration, not earthquake prediction or an alerting service. Requests are bounded to 5,000 displayed events / 8 MB / 25 seconds.