Taylor Swift gave fair warning in her hit song Shake it Off: “Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake.”
Scientists can now confirm that the American pop star’s fans have followed her advice with seismic readings recorded by the British Geological Survey (BGS). Over three nights from last Friday to Sunday, Swift sang for 220,000 fans at Murrayfield, Edinburgh. And they made the earth move.
The stadium rocked so hard that seismologists picked up the tremors 6km away. A Swift fan among the geologists even helped the team identify which songs provoked the biggest reaction.
The findings were possible because of an unusual conjunction. Swift’s carefully choreographed performance was identical each night, allowing the scientists to overlay successive evenings and tease out