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Smartphone-based earthquake alert system triggered by Mexican football fans
- basicplus2 8y agoWhat If Everyone On Earth Jumped at Once? Allain found that our jump would push on the Earth ever so slightly, giving it a recoil speed of 2.6 x 10^-13 m/s. That is, in one second, Earth would move about a hundredth of the radius of a single hydrogen atom . https://www.livescience.com/33383-everyone-on-earth-jumping-at-once.html https://www.livescience.com/33383-everyone-on-earth-jumping-...
- senectus1 8y agolol nope. not unless the sensors were buried less than a foot underground under a really big crowd.
- bcraven 8y agoWell actually it happened recently in Peru: https://twitter.com/alerta_sismo/status/930989560896647169 https://twitter.com/alerta_sismo/status/930989560896647169 So either someone saw that and decided to make this story up, or it does indeed happen. I can tell you from experience that seismometers are ridiculously sensitive- the noise reductions that need to be done after shooting a land survey are a nightmare.
- aaron695 8y agoIt's a shame this is down voted currently. Anyone with a average IQ and primary school knowledge should know this would be the case. HN really has a collective IQ that's quite low. It's value is in the tibit's you can pick out. Also it was totally true. It was a phone app in their pockets a foot away. The HN article title / article? have changed if anyone is wondering why this thread is a little confusing, but it's also obvious (Real title "Mexicans jubilant over World Cup win trigger earthquake sensors") I also highly doubt the story the actual facilities picked anything up even which the knowledge to look for it in minutia. I call total bullshit.
- natex 8y agoHere's the tweet by the Institute of Geologic and Atmospheric Investigations in Mexico. https://twitter.com/SIMMSAmex/status/1008374780351967233 https://twitter.com/SIMMSAmex/status/1008374780351967233
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- JorgeGT 8y agoThere's a lengthy explanation published in Facebook [1](in Spanish, sorry). The important fact is that there's an app which reads accelerometers in people's phones, which is used to trigger these "seek shelter" type alerts. Since many smartphones shook a lot in unison, the public alert was triggered. They apologize for this and state that they are working to avoid this from happening again. However, they remark that actual, scientific seismographs did indeed pick these "soccer goals" events, although since they were of relatively low magnitude (III to IV Mercalli scale), no public "seek shelter" alert was generated on the basis of these readings. [1] https://www.facebook.com/sismologia/posts/2149439968431910 https://www.facebook.com/sismologia/posts/2149439968431910
- acqq 8y agoNow it’s time to compare these actual measurements with all that’s written about “what would happen if all Chinese would jump at once.”
- gberger 8y agohttps://what-if.xkcd.com/8/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/8/
- crookshanked 8y agoThank you for posting that. Made my day!
- chatmasta 8y agoThe most insane part of that blog is that the entire world population would fit within the state of Rhode Island.
- trumped 8y agonot much happens when such a small earthquake happens....
- trumped 8y agoFalse positive should be easy to avoid by looking at the sensors of people around the stadium...
- amarant 8y agoMexico City was built on a lake. I wonder if that makes it more susceptible to such man-made earthquakes?
- tomhoward 8y agoPerhaps, but that’s irrelevant in this case; there was no tremor. The alert was falsely set off by people’s phone apps.
- ColinWright 8y agoThat's not entirely true - "proper" detectors did detect a "tremor". https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/world/americas/mexico-soccer-world-cup.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/world/americas/mexico-soc...
- tabtab 8y agoMy mom warned me to diet.