Metal Anarchy

AC/DC’s November 11 show at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Australia was so loud it registered on equipment used to monitor for earthquakes. Adam Pascale, chief scientist at the Seismology Research Centre, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the concert hit the 2-5 hertz range on a seismograph.

Pascale said the following:

“The sound waves that people were experiencing nearby and feeling something through their bodies, that’s the equivalent to what our seismographs feel. We’re picking up the ground motion, we’re not picking up the sound from the air. So you’ve got speakers on the ground pumping out vibrations and that gets transmitted through the ground, but also the crowd jumping up and down is feeding energy into the ground.”

He also added:

“If everyone’s sort of bouncing in unison, it tends to amplify the signal so we can pick it up a little bit better. Whereas if it’s sort of just general crowd motion, like even at the grand final at the MCG [Melbourne Cricket Ground], we can still pick that up.”