Listen to the Earth

Earthquake waves are far too slow for our ears: most of their energy lies below the range of human hearing. But if we play a seismometer record faster, the ground motion becomes sound. Here you can listen to real earthquakes recorded by the CHARNET stations of IGES, from tiny tremors under Armenia to great earthquakes thousands of kilometres away.

Press play and watch the wave. In each record you will hear the quieter P-wave first and then the stronger S-wave. The figure “sped up” shows how many times faster than real time the record is played.