Nature
PUBLISHED
Taylor Swift and her fans (known as "Swifties") have triggered earthquake sensors once more, this time setting off British Geological Survey (BGS) equipment 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) from the concert venue.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.Swift is currently on tour in the UK, and played the Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh from June 7-9. Monitoring the seismic activity generated by the concert and dancing attendees, the BGS was able to find differences in activity depending on the song being played.
"BGS monitoring stations around Edinburgh recorded seismic activity generated by the concerts," they explained in a statement. "Each of the three evenings followed a similar seismographic pattern, with ‘…Ready For It?’ ‘Cruel Summer’ and ‘champagne problems’ resulting in the most significant seismic activity each night."
An earthquake-inducing song, apparently.
Analyzing the data, the BGS found that the most enthusiastic dancing took place on Friday, though each concert created detectable seismic activity.
"The activity was mainly generated by fans dancing in time to the music and reached its peak at 160 beats per minute (bpm) during ‘…Ready For It?’, where the crowd was transmitting approximately 80 [kilowatts] of power (equivalent to around 10-16 car batteries)," the BGS added.
The activity was not huge, causing 23.4 nanometers of movement on the Friday when activity peaked, and it is unlikely anyone outside the immediate vicinity would feel it. However, it is pretty cool that we can use seismic detectors to figure out which Taylor Swift songs fans danced the hardest to.
"It’s amazing that we’ve been able to measure the reaction of thousands of concert goers remotely through our data," Callum Harrison, BGS Seismologist, added. "The opportunity to explore a seismic activity created by a different kind of phenomenon has been a thrill. Clearly Scotland’s reputation for providing some of the most enthusiastic audiences remains well intact!"
This isn't the first time Taylor Swift and fans have caused such a quake, with a previous concert in Seattle creating the equivalent of a 2.3 magnitude earthquake.
