“Footquakes” are seismological signals caused by a large number of football (or other sport) fans following a major event, like a goal. On April 7th, the FC Sion has scored the fastest goal ever in the Swiss Championship, just 10 seconds into the game. Our seismic station at 2.3 km distance has nicely detected the vibration. For full details read our Geoblog article (or in subsequent media appearances on Le Nouvelliste, Le Matin, msn, orange and So Foot).
In a week of recording at our test site in the Valais, all 4 earthquakes located by the Swiss Seismological Service were clearly visible and detected. This includes a magnitude 1.0 event at 36 km distance, which is a surprisingly good performance: the energy liberated by a magnitude 1.0 earthquake corresponds to approximately 1 cm slip on a 125 m2 area.
Below is the detected waveform, with the origin time (OT), P and S waves.
On Wednesday April 3rd, Luca dal Zilio from the California Institute of Technology will visit our institute. At the lunchtime Table Ronde he will present a seminar with the following title: Anatomy of the Main Himalayan Thrust: Implications for elastic energy storage and lateral segmentation.