Taylor Swift’s Fans Are So Powerful They Cause Literal Earthquakes
28.07.2023 - 17:25
/ usmagazine.com
Taylor Swift has one of the most devoted fan bases in the world — to the point that they’re now capable of causing minor earthquakes.
According to seismologist Jackie Caplan-Auerbach, Swifties who attended the Eras Tour in Seattle earlier this month caused seismic activity equivalent to a 2.3 magnitude earthquake. “I grabbed 10 hours of data from when doors opened to well after I thought the audience had gone home and I just plotted them out,” Caplan-Auerbach, who is a geology professor at Western Washington University, explained in a Wednesday, July 26, interview with Seattle’s KING 5 News.
Caplan-Auerbach decided to investigate the situation after she saw a Facebook post comparing the concerts to a 2011 Seattle Seahawks game where fans famously went wild enough to shake the ground after a Marshawn Lynch touchdown. (This incident is known as the Beast Quake.)
“The shaking was twice as strong as Beast Quake. It absolutely doubled it,” Caplan-Auerbach explained to CNN, noting that the shaking could have been caused by both the sound system and tens of thousands of dancing fans. “The primary difference is the duration of shaking. Cheering after a touchdown lasts for a couple seconds, but eventually it dies down. It’s much more random than a concert.”
Another seismologist, Mouse Reusch, turned the data into a sonogram to figure out which songs got the loudest response from the audience. Not so surprisingly, one of her students determined that megahits “Shake It Off” and “Blank Space” caused the most noise.
Swift, 33, played at Seattle’s Lumen Field on Saturday, July 22, and Sunday, July 23. The Saturday show broke the record for largest concert crowd at the venue, with 72,171 fans in attendance, per Swift’s team. (The previous