  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.
