The mass jumping of euphoric fans after Mexico scored two match-winning goals against Ecuador in a tense World Cup knockout game set off “significant” tremors, seismologists say.
Mexico’s Digital Platform for Early Warning and Comprehensive Risk Management (SASSLA) observed that “the outburst of euphoria and mass cheering” from fans following the goals in Tuesday’s match “produced vibrations in the local area”.
“The Goal by Julian Quiñones vs Ecuador was just recorded on several seismographs,” SASSLA wrote on X.
“We also have the record of the second Goal by Raúl Jiménez at the 31’,” it said.
Three people were also crushed to death in Mexico City after the match as nearly a million fans took to the streets to celebrate Mexico’s 2-0 win against Ecuador led to its qualification for the last 16 of the World Cup.
Such “human-induced earthquakes” have previously been reported, caused by intense activities like the construction of massive high-rise buildings, or from groundwater extraction, or fracking.
Previous such events have also been recorded during sporting events or large-scale performances like a 2024 Taylor Swift concert.
“This is how it was registered at the nearest RaspberryShake station to the Azteca Stadium, an outstanding artificial signal. The burst of euphoria and mass shouting produced vibrations in the local ground,” SASSLA said after the match.
While not a real earthquake, the shakes due to the rapid vibration of people jumping at the same time and their collective thud against the ground generated short surface waves, the quake monitoring platform Sismo Alerta Mexicana said in a post on X.
“If someone walks near a seismograph, it will clearly detect it; and if several people jump at the same time near it, it’s even easier,” it said.
“These are instruments that detect earthquakes on the other side of the world, so their sensitivity is extremely high,” the alert system’s official X account posted.
The phenomenon is not new and has been reported previously during major sporting events and concerts.
Such events can produce unique vibration signals that resemble tremors, according to a 2024 research on the phenomenon published in the journal Seismological Research Letters.
For instance, a Swift concert in 2023 with over 70,000 attending fans recorded strong seismic vibrations in network stations located within about 9 km of the stadium.
“All evidence considered, we interpret the signal source as primarily crowd motion in response to the music,” scientists wrote in this study.
Scientists hope the findings from such artificial tremors can help build better seismographs that distinguish between the different types of vibrations.
It can also help study the structure of the subsurface Earth and construct buildings and auditoriums that respond better to vibrations, researchers say.
