Universal shape profiles of earthquake ruptures

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Universal shape profiles in a variety of systems contain crucial information on the underlying dynamics. We develop such shape profiles for earthquakes as a stronger test of theory against observations. The earthquake analysis shows good agreement between theory and observations, with a discrepancy in one universal profile, just as in magnets. The analysis provides a stronger support for the idea that earthquakes are associated with criticality rather than event statistics only. The results point to the existence of deep connections between the physics of avalanches in different systems.