Quake it off: Seismic activity in Wexford as Swift played

Taylor Swift’s concerts in Dublin triggered seismic activity that could be felt as far away as Co Wexford, according to researchers at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS).

‘Shake It Off’ was found to be the song which created the most seismic activity across all three nights.

Activity from that song was identified more than 100km away.

Based on the data collected by DIAS researchers, it was Friday night’s concert that had the most ardent fans as the 50,000-strong crowd danced, cheered and stomped the loudest of the three gigs.

The fans made the most impact with their dancing to ‘Love Story’.

Eleanor Dunn, a PhD candidate at DIAS, led the research on Dublin’s “Swiftquakes”.

Inspired by a similar study that took place in Seattle last year, Ms Dunn decided to replicate it.

She and her team buried 21 seismometers in gardens around the Aviva stadium, specifically to measure the seismic impact of Ms Swift’s concerts.

“We wanted the seismometers to be as close as possible to the Aviva stadium,” she said.

They knocked on doors of houses near Lansdowne Road asking people for permission to dig a hole in their garden before the concerts began and then dig them up afterwards.

“People were really friendly,” Ms Dunn said.

“It [the seismometer] is about half the size of a paint can so it wasn’t too disruptive for people,” she added.

Not only were the concerts easily detected by a seismometer at an Irish National Seismic Network (INSN) station approximately 14km away from the Aviva Stadium, but the song’s impact was also felt as far away as Co Wexford.

‘Shake It Off’ was identifiable on another INSN seismometer, with the observed frequency of 2.66Hz matching the song’s beats per minute of 160.

“Shake If Off is a repetitive song that is easy to follow,” Ms Dunn said.

She explained that this is likely why the beat was so easy to detect from such a distance.

However, it was the song ‘Love Story’ that generated the highest seismic waves each night.

“We think we can actually pinpoint it to a particular line in the song,” Ms Dunn said.

Using footage that fans sent Ms Dunn on social media, she was able to observe that after “Taylor Swift sings ‘he knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring, and said’, everyone in the crowd sings ‘marry me, Juliet'”.

Dublin is not the only city that has recorded “Swiftquakes”, the phenomenon has also been recorded in Edinburgh, Cardiff and London in the UK.

The next stop on the Eras Tour is Hamburg and seismologists there have already contacted Ms Dunn about how they could replicate her study.

Ms Dunn hopes that sharing the data from this study so quickly will inspire citizen scientists.

She is still asking people to send her in any footage they took at the Taylor Swift concerts in Dublin so she can better match her graphs to the actions of the crowd.