When Taylor Swift performed Shake It Off in Seattle, Swifties literally shook the Earth, seismologists say

When Taylor Swift took the stage at Seattle'sLumen Fieldthis past weekend, the Earth moved. Literally.

Jackie Caplan-Auberbach, a professor in the geology department at the University of Western Washington, pulled the data, which showed the pop star'sEras Tour concert caused twice as much shakingas the infamous "Beast Quake" of 2011 when Marshawn Lynch scored a touchdown for the Seattle Seahawks, and secured the NFLteam a victory in awild card playoff game.

The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN) calculated Seattle fans cheering for the touchdown made the Earth shake with the equivalent of a 2.0 magnitude earthquake.

WATCH | Taylor Swift fans have Earth-shaking good time:

#TheMoment Taylor Swift fans caused an earthquake at her concert

1 year ago

Duration 1:31

Fans at Taylor Swifts recent concert in Seattle caused an earthquake double the strength of the 'beast quake' during a Seahawks game in the same stadium.

"If that was a two, this would've been a 2.3.,"Caplan-Auberbachtold CBC News.

She noted that it's not clear whether it was the fans dancing, or the booming sound system that caused all the shaking. In fact, by geologystandards, it's a pretty insignificant blip on the seismometer.

The machineused to measure the vibrations from the Earthhappens to be locatednext to the stadium where Swift was performing back-to-backsold-out shows.

The seismometer set list

The data the seismologists collected can be used in some pretty interesting ways.

Mouse Reusch ofPNSNtold CBC News her colleagues tookreadings of the ground shaking, sped it upand turned them into an audio file.

When they played that back, they were able to reverse-engineer the concert's set listby comparing the beats per minute of the readings and Swift's songs.

"It was kind of this weird, backwards way of coming up with the set list from the seismometer sitting next door to the Lumen Field," she said.

GettingSwifties into science

Although Caplan-Auberbach said the data is just "a little bit of noise" from a seismology perspective, she notes the exercise isas a great opportunity to get teenagers and Swifties excited about science.

"For me, one of the really exciting parts is sharing what science is and letting people recognize that science is not just a question of asking these erudite questions about things that don't matter to us or that you have to be in a white lab coat in a lab," she said.

"Observations that we make about the world, questions that we ask about the world, tests that we run to seeif our questions or hypotheses are right, all of that is science. Even if we're doing it about things like music, like dancing, like things that fulfil us,"Caplan-Auberbachsaid.

"And I really hope that people see from this that we do science all the time, and I really hope it demystifies what the scientific process is like."