The US Geological Survey said it occurred about 150km (95 miles) west of the Nicobar Islands and 440km from Sumatra, Indonesia.
The quake prompted the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center to issue a tsunami watch for the Indian Ocean.
But the agency later reduced the watch to India only, saying there was a possibilty of a local tsunami.
"A destructive widespread tsunami threat does not exist based on historical earthquake and tsunami data," the Hawaii-based centre said.
However, emergency services in Sri Lanka say they have issued an alert for coastal regions.
In 2004, a powerful earthquake off Sumatra's coast triggered a tsunami that killed more than 220,000 people around the rim of the Indian Ocean.
One site says this was a 7.7 earthquake.
This earthquake popped up a few minutes ago on the Earthquake monitor. Earthquakes are happening every few minutes, in some cases seconds. Most are smaller in the 2 to 3 range.
Alaska is up with a 2.9 currently.
Beliefnet Community Moderator ~ Peace Love Stardove
It is no longer good enough to cry peace, we must act peace, live peace, and live in peace. -Shenandoah proverb
Living in Denver, I've got a supervolcanic gun pointed at my head
Now there's earthquakes in Chile and in Indonesia. Is there not any place on Earth out of the reach of these geothermal monsters???
There are not many places the earth is not shaking.
6.1 Costa Rica is on the earthquake alert on my computer now. Every few minutes the picture on the monitor will shake with another earthquake report. Haven't seen one in TX, but that doesn't mean I won't.... (knocking on wood) CA seems to be having minor ones a whole lot of the time.
Beliefnet Community Moderator ~ Peace Love Stardove
It is no longer good enough to cry peace, we must act peace, live peace, and live in peace. -Shenandoah proverb
The quake, initially reported as a magnitude 7.6, struck at 4:14 a.m. on Friday (1:14 p.m. EDT on Thursday) and was centered 133 miles northwest of Santo in Vanuatu, at a depth of 22.4 miles, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center for a brief time issued a warning for Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and New Caledonia but later canceled it, saying sea level readings did not indicate any tsunami signal.
Police and fire service officials in Vanuatu said they had not felt the quake.
Eddie Stice, Vanuatu Country Director for the U.S. Peace Corps, said by telephone that he had not felt the quake from the capitol Port Vila, which is on an island a few hundred miles (km) south of the quake epicenter, and that he was not aware of any damage.
Beliefnet Community Moderator ~ Peace Love Stardove
It is no longer good enough to cry peace, we must act peace, live peace, and live in peace. -Shenandoah proverb
And here I thought it was all due to Elvis being ALL Shook Up!!!
There are earthquakes happening all the time, every few minutes it seems my screen shakes due to another earthquake. We only hear about the large ones that do so much damage.
Ecuador just had a 4.5.
Beliefnet Community Moderator ~ Peace Love Stardove
It is no longer good enough to cry peace, we must act peace, live peace, and live in peace. -Shenandoah proverb
Yesterday Japan was stuck by an earthquake. Today Chile was stuck by an earthquake so large the entire Pacific Ocean has tsunami warning including the Hawaiian Islands. What is going on with planet earth?
Same old same old, really.
The perception that something is happening rests on a number of factors.
1. Any process involving apparently random events will have 'excursions' where the number or magnitude of the events will vary from the mean.
2. Our perception of what is happening is vastly influenced by things like news coverage. It's only real if we hear about it. You can't judge frequency of events by the amount of news coverage. You have to look at statistics, preferably from relevant peer reviewed journals. Those are often wrong, as well, but your odds of getting real data are much better.
3. We are much better at detecting things happening in remote locations, like the middle of the ocean or 200 km below the surface of the earth. Any statistics should be read with an understanding of changes in our instrumentation and detection ability.
4. People tend to judge these things by 'human impact'. A quake that kills a thousand people is thought of as more significant than one that doesn't hurt anyone. A quake that does ten billion dollars damage is thought of as worse than one years ago that caused a million dollars in damage. This sort of thinking leads to an inherent bias in the evaluation of severity of events. As the human population of the planet skyrockets, and multistory buildings replace huts and tents, there are way more people to be killed, and many of them are now living in areas that were sparsely populated or unpopulated. Due to crowding, people live in flood plains, or in buildings that can kill dozens when they collapse. As a result, modern earthquakes do a lot more damage and kill a lot more people than the same quakes in the same locations would have fifty or a hundred years ago.
5. Technology changes often make our lives vulnerable to natural disruptions. This makes us aware of them. The current issue with the Icelandic volcano crippling air travel? A hundred years ago Europe wouldn't have noticed the ash plume... and there would have been no 'knock on' effect on North American travel. Today's interconnected world is different. Similarly, before widespread use of satellites and large electrical grids, solar flares were not significant. If you light your nights with kerosene lamps and hunt, fish, or farm with non-electrical tools, you won't even notice them.
So, as I said, same old same old. There's nothing to see here....
"I am the soul of nature that gives life to the universe."
