“Rapid earthquake”: this is how the event was ironically defined in social networks and media around the world covering the news. CNN was the first to write about this in the United States, which interviewed seismologist Jackie Kaplan-Auerbach and reported that during the Taylor Swift show on July 22 and 23 at Lumen Field in Seattle, a seismograph near the stadium recorded signals similar to earthquakes of magnitude 2.3. Does this mean that Taylor Swift really caused the earthquake? Not really, despite the sensational headlines these days.
Kaplan-Auerbach himself elaborated in a subsequent New York Times interview in which the seismologist elaborated that the seismometers receive signals from “anything that shakes the earth,” from cars to trains, even passing through the wind. They do this by measuring the acceleration of ground motion and then converting that data to the Richter scale used for earthquakes. In the case of Taylor Swift’s concerts at Lumen Field in Seattle, as part of the “Eras Tour”, during which the pop star has performed live in major stadiums in the United States in recent weeks, the maximum vibration acceleration was 0.011 meters per second. second square. “We’re talking about a phenomenon caused by 70,000 people, all the music, everyone around the concert,” said Maus Reusch, a seismologist with the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. According to the data, both shows peaked twice, once around 7:30 pm and again around 9:30 pm.
The acceleration was “twice as fast” as during a 2011 Seahawks football game during a game-winning touchdown in the final minutes of the game. At the time, there was talk of “Animal Quake” due to the nickname of the touchdowner, Marshawn Lynch. The seismometer also picked up signals when The Weeknd played at Lumen Field on August 25 last year, Kaplan-Auerback said, but in that case, the acceleration wasn’t big enough to allow the Canadian star to make headlines.