What do you think an earthquake would sound like if you could hear it?

Here’s a sample (opens in a new tab).

The audio was generate by processing seismic data.

More samples are available on from the source where you can also find the corresponding spectrograms, (i.e. the representation of the frequency content of the signal and how it varies in time).

via Zhigang Peng @ Georgia Institute of Technology

Credit: Peng, Z., C. Aiken*, D. Kilb, D. Shelly, B. Enescu (2012), Listening to the 2011 magnitude 9.0 Tohoku-Oki, Japan earthquake, Seismol. Res. Lett., 83(2), 287-293, doi: 10.1785/gssrl.83.2.287. , and Kilb, D., Z. Peng, D. Simpson, A. Michael and M. Fisher* (2012), Listen, watch, learn: SeisSound video products, Seismol. Res. Lett., 83(2), 281-286, doi: 10.1785/gssrl.83.2.281.

As a follow-up here’s a nice video from USGS