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Which era was the loudest? Scientists analyze seismic activity of Taylor Swift's Seattle concerts

The hours of screaming, singing and dancing registered an equivalent of a 2.3 magnitude earthquake at Lumen Field in July.

SEATTLE — Editor's note: The video playing above originally aired on July 26.

Tens of thousands of Swifties caused seismic activity two nights in a row last month during Taylor Swift's stop in Seattle for The Eras Tour.

The hours of screaming, singing and dancing registered an equivalent of a 2.3 magnitude earthquake at Lumen Field in July. Now, scientists with the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN) have analyzed the seismic activity song-by-song. 

The chart shown below breaks down the seismic activity of the first night of the concert, which lasted over four hours. The different colors in the chart symbolize each of Swift's albums or eras. For example, the pink portion portrays her album, "Lover," which she opened her set with. 

The activity before Swift's set was made during the opening performances from HAIM and Gracie Abrams. 

At the bottom of each graph, PNSN listed every song Swift played. The color of a song title symbolizes the amount of seismic activity it generated.

Based on the graphs, the songs that generated the strongest seismic activity were "You Belong With Me" and "Bad Blood."

The PNSN analyzed the second night of the concert as well. The chart below shows seismic activity from Sunday night's show. As expected, the activity recorded mirrored Saturday night's event. The major difference is in the time, which can be explained by a roughly 30-minute delay in Sunday night's show. 

Western Washington University geology professor Jackie Caplan-Auerbach was the first to analyze the seismic activity of the shows. She was inspired when someone asked if the Taylor Swift concerts were louder than the 2011 "Beast Quake," when Marshawn Lynch scored a touchdown and the crowd went wild, causing record-breaking seismic activity. 

She said it’s tricky to compare the magnitude difference of the two, but she did the math and says one "Swift Quake" is about twice as big as a Beast Quake, but emphasizes that the Beast Quake was only a few seconds compared to an hours-long concert. 

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