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Groundquake

Groundquakes were natural phenomena on rocky planets. As their internal cores spun, they created rift zones, faults, and plates on the surface as a result of convection currents. When two plates moved past each other, or slid past or under each other, the immense friction would result in a groundquake and anything caught in the shock wave would be damaged or destroyed from shaking. Scales for measuring groundquakes included standard magnitude^[1] and the Imperial quake scale.^[2]

A magnitude 77.88 groundquake was mentioned as being fairly major.^[3]

1 Natural occurrences of groundquakes
2 Artificially created groundquakes
3 Behind the scenes
4 Appearances
5 Sources
6 Notes and references
7 See also

Natural occurrences of groundquakesEdit

Groundquakes were common to Berchest^[1], Shola, Riflor, Velusia, and many other planets.

In 43.5 ABY, groundquakes occurred on the planet Kessel.

Artificially created groundquakesEdit

When Bao-Dur's Mass Shadow Generator was activated once again on Malachor V it unleashed massive and devastating groundquakes that literally tore the planet apart.

The initial shot on Despayre from the first Death Star's superlaser triggered massive groundquakes and shifted entire tectonic plates.^[4]

Behind the scenesEdit

Groundquakes are identical to earthquakes, but on other planets. The scale upon which they are measured appears to be the same also. It is possible that "earth" was replaced by "ground" to avoid any reference to the real-world Earth in Star Wars canon.

Despite this reasoning, Revenge of the Sith: Incredible Cross-Sections makes an erroneous reference to a "Magnitude-10 earthquake" being the maximum yield of one the quad turbolaser batterys aboard the Invisible Hand.