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Subscribe to RSSThis recording of the 2011 Japan earthquake was taken near the Japanese coastline between Tokyo and the Fukushima nuclear reactor site. Georgia Tech researchers converted the seismic waves into audio files.
Researchers from Georgia Tech suggest that the best way to visualize the seismic effects of last year's Japan earthquake is with your ears — and they've put together three "audifications" to demonstrate.
One recording is based on seismometer readings taken on March 11, 2011, along the Japanese coastline between Tokyo and the hard-hit Fukushima nuclear complex. The audio starts with a bang — the magnitude-9.0 shock — and continues with the pounding noise of aftershocks that sound like a bull knocking over shelves in a china shop.
Readings from seismometers that were place about 90 miles away from the quake's epicenter reveal a double-barreled bang. That suggests there were "at least two patches of high-frequency radiation from the mainshock rupture," the researchers note.
A third clip is based on readings from California. The Japan quake sparked deep rumblings in the San Andreas Fault, which begin with a sound like distant thunder, and then continue with a crackle that represents "induced tremor activity at the fault," the Georgia Tech team says.
The audio was created by taking the seismic signals, which are typically detected in the 0.01 to 100 Hz frequency range, and speeding the soundtrack by a factor of 50 to 100 times. That brings the sound into the audible range of 20 Hz to 20 kHz, and crunches hours' worth of data into less than a minute of audio.
This recording was taken about 90 miles from the Japanese earthquake's epicenter. There are two distinct sound waves. Both are caused by the main shock. A "pop" is heard 90 seconds (in actual time) after the main event. This pop wasn't recorded at any other nearby stations, leading Georgia Tech's Zhigang Peng to believe that the ground shifted immediately under the measuring station.
In this recording of the 2011 Japanese earthquake, taken from measurements in California, the quake created subtle movements deep in the San Andreas Fault. The initial noise, which sounds like distant thunder, corresponds with the Japanese main shock. Afterwards, a continuous high-pitch sound, similar to rainfall that turns on and off, represents induced tremor activity at the fault.
In these YouTube videos, the seismic data is also displayed on a graph.
"By combining seismic auditory and visual information, static 'snapshots' of earthquake data come to life," Georgia Tech's Zhigang Peng and his colleagues write in the March-April edition of Seismological Research Letters. "In addition, this approach allows the audience to relate seismic signals generated by earthquakes to familiar sounds such as thunder, popcorn popping, rattlesnakes, gunshots, firecrackers, etc."
The researchers say that seismic audifications can make it easier to explain the concept of distant quake triggering to general audiences, and that they also provide a tool for experts to identify and understand such seismic signals in other regions. What do you think? Do these clips give you a better feel for how seismic events get started and keep rattling on?
One year after the disaster in Japan:
- Then and now: The 2011 Japan tsunami
- Kuni Takahashi revisits the earthquake zone
- Ridley Scott and Japan TV team up on documentary
- Midway Atoll expecting Japan tsunami debris soon
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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Let me be the first to say science rocks. I know it's not the ACTUAL sound but it really brings to life what used to be simply squiggles on paper for non-geologists. Awesome. And no, the quake wasn't Obama's fault.
Obama did it again! Can't he do anything right?
@Mghall Obama isnt mother nature you ingnorant jackass.
@Ginaa., excellent job misunderstanding even the most obvious humor. Also, I believe this site has some sort of terms of service... hmm, maybe I'm mistaken though.
Excellent pun: "Obama's Fault."!!! Win!
I wonder what the earth really sounds like when it's moving at this magnitude? Probably a lot scarier than this. And enough to send the toughest criminal want to go crying home to Mama.
That's interesting and why I love science fairs! Having been in the 89' bay area quake it's neat because it gives a sound to what you feel. Almost like you can hear what can happen next. You could definitely use this as a tool for preparedness drills. Most people that haven't been through an earthquake don't realize how long 14-30 seconds can be and what can happen when everything is shaking. Too bad it can predict when they'll strike.
Was in a three story brick school house built in 1928 in 1965 during a 6.8 (?, can't remember exactly 6.6-6.9) that was a swaying and crackling and 27 seconds is a lifetime when it's actually happening.
If you were in Western Washington, that was the "6.5 in 65!" I was in Puyallup, WA. and in 8th grade Home Room class when we were instructed about Fire and Earthquake procedures in the morning bulletin, and right after the Fire drill explanation, our instructor said, "And now for the Earthquake drill procedures." And right after she uttered that phrase, the placed started rocking and rolling for as you said 21 seconds....Wild! She shouted..."Under Your desks!"...and she disappeared under her desk! And she was about 5'11" and about 250 lbs. What was spooky, was, right after the quake stopped, it felt like a bunch of marshmallows were letting all their air out, as the room slowly subsided.
Wow.
I don't know if it was just me- but I seem to recall the sound of the Earth grumbling during that 89 Earthquake! You hear a strange grumble/rumble and then everything starts to shake. Crazy scary!
Too bad they havent figured away to predict these things, might save some lives.
There is a way. Just ask GOD. That is what they have not figured out yet.
OK Chuck. How about you be the official head of the new federal "Ask God When Earthquakes Are Gonna Happen Department". You should take the position. The job wouldn't be nearly as frivolous as many government positions that already exist. And when you fail and thousands of lives are lost, maybe then you'll see as everyone else that has more than three functioning brain cells, just how creepily brainwashed and literally insane your comment is. But I really doubt it.
Love this. It really brings it to life. I have only felt small tremors and I hope it stays that way.LOL
Was in Las Vegas in 1998, and felt a very minor 4.2 shaker. I can not begin to comprehend what a 9.+ would feel like.
This gives a much better understanding to the seismometer readings that one might see after something like this occurs.
Was in a minor quake, with definite movement. Almost felt like a Fun House floor.
Sounded like thunder to me...
UH, O.K. HMMMMM.
The 7.0 in Ca. was enough for me, and that was the rolling type. Don't even want to imagine going through a 9.0 slip-strike.
What's the difference?
@morndew How a quake "feels" depends on the sort of terrain it goes through. For instance, in severe quakes in the Bay Area, the parts of San Francisco that are on landfill take a terrible beating, as was seen in 1989 with the liquefaction and widespread damage in the Marina District as compared even with other parts of San Francisco. It was described by survivors as being like a bomb going off, a violent, persistent shaking. I was in College at the time in Santa Clara, and it was more like being in a small boat on the ocean in choppy seas...wave after big wave. Strike-slip is actually a fault type, not a quake type. The San Andreas fault, which caused both Loma Prieta and the 1906 quake, is a strike-slip fault.
Amazing! And to think that the first one is 100 times the actual speed. That must have seemed like forever to the people in it.
In the Virgin Islands there are minor quakes all the time. It sounds like distant thunder then gets louder as it gets closer then the grounds starts shaking, then it slowly travels away and you are left with the sense of "what's next". It is worst at night when you are woken up out of bed because of it.
Good stuff. I love science.
One question though, is this available in a remix encorporated with AutoTune?
Alan Boyle wrote this:
[SOURCE: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/06/10593462-hear-the-soundtrack-of-a-super-quake ]
And it is accurate information, of course, but after listening to "Hearing the Japanese Earthquake - Clip 2" (Georgia Tech), I thought it might be interesting to apply a few techniques that one discovers by virtue of (a) being a musician and (b) devoting a bit of attention to acoustic physics, where one of the first things I noticed is that speeding up the seismic waves 100 times tends to move the sound into the generally annoying midrange and high-frequency regions of normal human hearing, where in particular the human ear is most sensitive to pitches in what I call the "upper midrange" (approximately 2 kHz to 5 kHz), which is the dip shown in the classic Fletcher-Munson curves, as well as the modern ISO 226:2003 curves, and what happens in the auditory perception apparatus of the brain is that quite a few aspects of sounds are ignored, modified, enhanced, combined, and so forth and so on, where my current hypothesis regarding the purpose and goal of all this perceptual activity is that it is done primarily for primal survival reasons, which I base on several facts:
(1) In general, for a sound to be perceived as being twice as loud, its volume needs to increase by 10 times, which makes it logarithmic, hence the unit called "decibel" . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibel
(2) Due to the general insensitivity of the auditory perceptual apparatus to deep bass, (a) at lower overall sound pressure levels this maps to low frequencies needing to be increased significantly in sound pressure level (dB SPL) to be perceived as being equally loud as upper-midrange sounds but (b) at approximately 85 dB SPL nearly the full range of audible frequencies are perceived as being equal in loudness, which is what the various Fletcher-Munson curves show and is one of the reasons that songs need to be mixed while listening to the audio on calibrated full-range loudspeakers (20 Hz to 20 kHz) . . .
[NOTE: This also is the reason that home stereo systems have a "loudness" button, which when pressed boosts the lower frequencies and is provided for times when you want to listen to music at a low overall sound pressure level, although in some scenarios there is another way to do it, which incidentally is used by every loudspeaker and studio monitor system manufacturer and is one of the more egregious ongoing consumer scams on this planet, which is explained in vast detail in my topic on studio monitors in the IK Multimedia FORUM (see link below) and is based on the "Missing Fundamental" auditory illusion, which for reference is one of the techniques Bose uses to create the illusion of deep bass in its typically tiny loudspeaker systems, which is fine with me and is not something I consider to be trickery, although it only works for overtone hearers not fundamental tone hearers like me, but so what. The fact of the matter is that to reproduce deep bass accurately a woofer needs to push and to pull a lot of air, and as Sir Isaac Newton discovered in the 18th century, this maps to "big and heavy" no matter how it is done, and since "big and heavy" maps to increased manufacturing and shipping costs, nobody does "big and heavy" at the dawn of the early-21st century, which essentially is fine if you are tone deaf but is not so spanky if you are a fundamental tone hearer, which you can determine by a simple audio test provided by the researchers at Heidelberg University, which is found at the link to the Hydrogenaudio FORUM (see below) . . . ]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher-Munson_curves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_fundamental
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t40690.html
http://www.ikmultimedia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2290
(3) Due to the Haas Effect, two identical sounds arriving in a very short time (5ms to 30ms or so) are combined by the perceptual apparatus into a single sound which is twice as loud . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haas_effect
[NOTE: John Lennon was a big fan of the Haas Effect, and it is easy to hear on "Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)" in the following YouTube music video . . . ]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEjUQ15lyzk
There are other factors, but these are sufficient when combined with a few clues from Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution and a bit of common sense, where the result is that the auditory perception apparatus of the human brain is more sensitive to the sound of a rapidly approaching tiger whose paws are crunching leaves, twigs, and branches than to the sound of a herd of stampeding elephants, hence the survival aspect which provides the earliest possible warning to get out of the way quickly; to run and hide; to turn and point your petard; or, if nothing else comes to mind, to start screaming hysterically while doing the Ketchup Song dance . . .
[NOTE: There is a fourth factor which is very important, and it is the wavelengths of frequencies, where for example deep bass and subsonic bass frequencies have wavelengths in the range of 20 to 50 feet, more or less, which among other things is the reason that you hear the car of mutants listening to modern music inside cars that have massive custom designed sound systems with 10 billion watt subwoofers several blocks before they drive by your front yard, which like its visual counterparts--tattoos and body piercings--provides a handy early warning to get out of the way; to run and hide; to turn and point your petard; or to start screaming hysterically while doing the Ketchup Song dance, since explained another way using an analogy, metaphor, or simile, you feel the herd of stampeding elephants long before you hear them, all of which is explained in great detail in one of my topics in the IK Multimedia FORUM (see above), where the link to the YouTube video for "Aserejé" (Las Ketchup), a.k.a. "The Ketchup Song" follows this note . . . ]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFzyYYZsxGc
So, with all this in mind and having consumed huge quantities of Massimo Zanetti Master Chef® coffee made in the ratio of 1/2 cup of ground coffee to 12 ounces of water at the ideal brewing temperature of 200 degrees Fahrenheit--which I can do because I have the full array of what I call the "South American Coffee Achiever Gene Matrix" in honor of various research done in that area of the Western Hemisphere, as well as in Central America--I had the idea that it might be interesting to slow the speed of the seismic waves toward the goal of moving the sounds into the more pleasing deep bass and low-midrange regions, where for reference most of the really good stuff happens at frequencies lower than standard "Concert A", which is 440 Hz, with "Middle C" on a piano being approximately 262 Hz; the low-pitch "E" string on a Hofner "Beatle" Bass being approximately 41 Hz; and Elvis Presley's vocal range being approximately F2 to F5 in scientific pitch notation (approximately 87 Hz to 698 Hz), which runs from the 1st fret of the low-pitch "E" string of an electric guitar to the 13th fret of the high-pitch "e" string of an electric guitar at standard "Concert A" tuning . . .
All the other stuff is harmonics or overtones, and it is significant--since it is what distinguishes an oboe from a violin or trumpet--but the important stuff happens below 1,000 Hz, really . . .
Really!
And much to my complete and total surprise, which bordered on being simply amazed, when the seismic data in "Hear the Japanese Earthquake - Clip 2" is slowed by 500 percent (or is made 5 times slower, if you prefer), where instead of playing in approximately 36 seconds it plays for approximately 3 minutes, everything becomes quite melodic and in fact sounds at times like part of the synthesizers in one of the classic Pink Floyd songs from "The Dark Side Of The Moon", as heard in the following YouTube music video for "On The Run" (Pink Floyd), which is fabulous . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLQrzPZB58A
[NOTE: This is the MP3 audio file for the slower version of the aforementioned seismic waves, and it is 6MB at 277-kbps (VBR) and runs for 3 minutes. The AIFF audio file is approximately 30MB, but the MP3 sounds the same to me, and it is a smaller audio file. For reference, I used Screenflow (Telestream) to capture the audio from the YouTube video and then exported the audio in Lossless AIFF format, which I imported to Digital Performer (MOTU) and copied the resulting soundbite to a stereo track, where I then set the time or duration of the soundbite to 500 percent, which plays it five times slower, which affects both the speed and the pitch, where for example if you played a kick drum 440 times per second, regardless of the pitch to which the kick drum is tuned and whatever else you hear, you will hear a "Concert A" note. I need to ponder precisely what "500 percent" slower with the "Time-scale audio" option selected does, but what I hear maps (a) to the pitch or frequency of the seismic waves lowering, (b) to the arrival rate of the seismic waves slowing, and (c) to the duration of the seismic waves increasing, which from the perspective of notes maps to slower but longer notes at lower pitches, where instead of sounding like a blur of white, pink, or brown noise, it sounds melodic. . . ]
http://www.surfwhammys.com/Tohoku-Earthquake-500-Percent-Slower.mp3
Fabulous! :-)
P. S. Explained yet another way, if you want to hear how the Tohoku earthquake might sound if it had been accompanied by Pink Floyd, then listen to "On The Run", which is a bit beyond mind-boggling . . .
Mind-boggling!
Sounded like rolling thunder. Interesting.