Shockwaves through my kitchen; What has Ireland got to do with earthquakes?
By Katie McShane
Pictured is a reading of the 7.7 earthquake that hit Myanmar on the 28th of March. The seismometer that picked it up? Sits comfortably on my kitchen floor some nine thousand kilometres from the epicentre. Despite how it may seem, I don’t live in some meteorology research centre. What I do have is a ‘Quake Shake; a device owned by hundreds of ordinary people around Ireland. But what has Ireland got to do with seismology? More than you might think….
‘Quake Shake’ is a program created by DIAS, the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, with the aim to create a nationwide community of ‘citizen seismologists’. It runs using a raspberry shake – a real time monitor built using a tiny raspberry pi computer board. These raspberry shakes can now be found all around the island picking up shockwaves from across the globe pinging up minute by minute the thousands of tiny (and bigger) earthquakes there are every week.
Despite seeming relatively stable, the island of Ireland is no stranger to earthquakes. The most recent Irish earthquake was only a magnitude of 2.6, occurring in Dublin last September. This is considered a fairly minor earthquake so not big enough to be extremely noticeable. We have however experienced several (albeit small) major earthquakes, magnitude 4 and above, including a 4.9 recorded in Letterkenny Co. Donegal in 2020. Despite not being a very tectonically active country, Ireland does have several ‘earthquake hotspots’ – Donegal, Wexford, and the Irish Sea. This is because the island sits on two plates split around 500 million years ago. Because of this there is a huge fault line running through Barnsmore Gap in Donegal (A local U-shaped valley if we want to be really geographical). [1]
Back to Ireland’s seismology connection – we practically invented it! Often named ‘the father of seismology’ Robert Mallet was born and reared in Dublin, earning his degree in science and mathematics from Trinity College. At just 22 he was a member of both the Royal Geographical Society of Ireland and the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Mallet built an early prototype of the seismograph and alongside his son John William Mallet conducted the first controlled seismic explosions. He went as far as Naples in 1857 to analyse the results of a previous deadly earthquake. His finding here was published in ‘The first principles of observational seismology’ a report for which he won multiple awards. What’s more, is that Robert Mallet is said to have come up with the very vocabulary we use for earthquakes, coining both epicentre and seismology. [2]
There you have it, Ireland’s unique connection to earthquakes and seismology. Who would have guessed? Despite our rich history regarding the study of seismic action, the relationship is relatively unknown, and the figures are only brought up when another minor earthquake shocks people all the way to google. However, with the increased rollout of programmes such as the quakeshakes, hopefully more people will become aware and involved in Irish seismology.
Sources
1- RTE, The science of earthquakes in Ireland, 8th May 2023, The science of earthquakes in Ireland
2- Brittannica, Robert Mallet, Robert Mallet | Biography, Seismology, & Facts | Britannica
