Earthtunes

Earthtunes is a mobile application that helps you listen to normally inaudible sounds within the Earth beneath us. These sounds are caused by seismic waves and are so low in frequency that our ears do not hear them. Most of these seismic waves are weak and continuously generated by a range of environmental sources. Some of these seismic waves are strong and caused by earthquakes.

If you’ve ever played videos at twice the speed, you will have noticed that the pitch of the video’s sound went up as well. Earthtunes lets you listen to the Earth’s seismic waves by increasing their pitch. Start, for example, by listening to 2 hours of today’s ambient seismic noise recorded by a seismic station in a place near you. Two hours of seismic data translates to several seconds of sound.

Then find the day and origin time of a moderately large earthquake, from anywhere in the world, for example at https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map. Next, listen to two hours of data, from the same seismic station near you, following the earthquake’s origin time. Note that times are in Universal time (UTC), which is different from the local time near you. Then keep the time the same and choose a seismic station from a place closer to the epicenter of the earthquake. You can find the epicenter on the same web site.

We hope you find these sounds as fascinating as we do. As seismologists we are working to understand what these sounds mean, it’s like learning a foreign language without a dictionary. While we have learned a lot over the past 100 years, many mysteries remain.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Audio Playing: If your Apple device is not playing audio, please visit the Apple Support website for audio settings within iOS devices: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203794

Android Version: Coming Soon. We will keep you updated as we appreciate the encouragement and interest in Earthtunes!