Now you can have your quakes and read them too!
Ever since visiting the Science Museum of Minnesota and seeing a very large (as in three stories of atrium space large) installation of an “instrument” that used an algorhithm (or several) to turn a constant feed of seismic information into notes played in this giant… suspended… plunky reverberating thing, I’ve been obsessed with using seismic information in a similar way. Now that I live in California, any time I feel even the slightest of rumbles I immediately go to the US Geological Survey to see if there’s indeed been an earthquake.
As always, the answer is yes. Every day there are a hundred earthquakes just in the Bay Area, none of them typically felt or noticed. If I have the time, I usually end up spending at least an hour reading (or trying to read) the graphs, charts, maps, information, historical earthquake readings, information pages about volcanoes or tectonic plates, etc. In other words, I fixate like a six-year-old in a dinosaur store.
After last night’s earthquake, I’m up this morning still thinking about how to get some kind of feed when LO AND BEHOLD, I see that my dear, charming, lovely friends at the USGS have provided
AN ENTIRE PAGE OF FEEDS TO FREAK OUT ON.
I nearly spilled my coffee. You have to understand, the fixational lobe of my brain, the one that controls repetitive thoughts and has caused me to walk out into oncoming traffic while stuck on an idea, has been seeking this Holy Grail ever since I saw those giant musical vertebrae of seismology. I can now have, delivered straight into my Google Reader, updates for every 2.5 magnitude earthquake or higher within five minutes (domestically) or 30 minutes (internationally).
FREAK OUT! That’s not all. If you haven’t experienced the shock and awe and flight-like 3-D awesomeness of Google Earth, please do. Do it on my behalf - it’s a huge program, and my crapped out little iBook can’t run with the big boys anymore. The feeds page says that it’ll map earthquake data RIGHT ONTO GOOGLE EARTH.
I can’t express to you the ferocious agony I am experiencing at not being able to do this RIGHT NOW. Will someone please send me a very large gift card to the Apple Store so I can get a computer that can actually display letters at the same time I type them - not five seconds after?
I’ve now set up feeds so I can see every legit earthquake, everywhere in the world, for the past seven days. I can also see “shake maps” that are color-coded by intensity for the US and Canada. The best part about the shake maps? If you look very closely, down at the bottom, you will see the extra-sciencey disclaimer “NOT REVIEWED BY HUMAN.”
It may well be that the robots are taking over, but the darling, wonderful scientists at USGS - clearly the best government agency ever - want to make sure that you know the difference. I wish I could vote for a seismologist in this election.
