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world's most powerful quake registered off austral World's most powerful quake registered off Australia:

[World News]: Canberra, Dec 24 : The world's most powerful earthquake measuring 8.1 on the Richter Scale was registered Friday near the Macquarie Island off Australia.

The epicentre of the quake was 400 km off Macquarie Island and 800 km off the coast of the state of Tasmania, reports Xinhua.

Geoscience Australia said the quake hit an area known as the Macquarie Rise in the Pacific Ocean.

The quake was felt throughout Tasmania and shook buildings. But, curiously, a group of Australian scientists in an Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) scientific station on Macquarie Island did not feel it.

Seismologist Cvetan Sinadinovski said there was no danger to structures anywhere because the quake struck too far off the coast.

"This was an inter-plate earthquake between Indo-Australian and Pacific plates," he said.

It was the biggest quake since one occurred off the coast of Peru in early 2001, according to Sinadinovski.