Seahawks fans to help seismologists test new equipment

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Fans packing CenturyLink Field in Seattle this weekend won’t just be there to root on their beloved Seahawks during their NFL playoff game against the Carolina Panthers – they’ll also be helping seismologists test out an early warning system for earthquakes.

According to local news reports, the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network installed instruments throughout the stadium on Thursday in the event that the raucous fans in attendance on Saturday successfully manage to trigger another seismic event during the course of the game.

Yes, another, as the Seahawks’ infamous fanbase, known as “The 12th Man”, responded so enthusiastically to a 68-yard, game-winning touchdown run by Marshawn Lynch during a 2011 playoff game that the activity registered a small tremor at the stadium, then called Qwest Field. The play has since been dubbed the “Beast Quake” in honor of Lynch’s nickname.

“Through the response of the roar and stomping of the tens of thousands of feet, the ground shook enough that the vibrations were recorded” by a strong-motion station located roughly one block away, the seismologists wrote in 2012. “Recordings revealed a peak acceleration of about 1/20,000th of a g, and peak motion of about 1/100th of a mm.”

This year, in addition to the PNSN instruments, University of Washington researchers will be testing something known as the QuickShake tool. This instrument is said to provide a faster connection between the sensors and the organization’s website, and if it functions as planned, it will show vibrations within three seconds – up to 10 times faster than previously possible.

The seismologists are hoping that the new technology will be able to detect the shaking event likely to occur if and when the Seahawks score, according to Popular Science. Since people are expected to be monitoring the experiment from home, the PNSN believes that this will be a good test for the new equipment to see if it can handle large amounts of traffic in an emergency.

“We’re mostly interested in the speed and the reliability of the communications,” University of Washington professor John Vidale, director of the seismic network, explained in a statement. “It’s hard to simulate thousands of people using this tool all at once. When we can get a lot of people looking, we can see problems that we’d encounter during an actual earthquake.”

“The Seahawks experiment should provide us and the Internet-connected public with a feel for the minimum time early warning might provide,” added UW professor Steve Malone. “In this case it’s football fan activity that generates a signal as a warning for what shows up on TV some seconds later. In the future, it might be seconds to minutes of warning after an earthquake starts.”

The seismologists will also have additional staff monitoring social media during the course of Saturday’s game, and they are preparing their websites to handle the expected additional traffic without experiencing slow down or crashing. They also hope that the sensors, which are placed at different levels, can explain unusual patterns of shaking during commercial breaks.

“And there’s an added bonus,” according to Popular Science. “Because the game will be broadcast with a ten-second delay, Seahawks fans keeping an eye on PNSN’s data could know about a score several seconds before they see it on TV.”

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