A Twitter user posted a screenshot Tuesday night, claiming crowd noise at Citizens Bank Park during Game 3 of the World Series registered as earthquakes on the seismometer at Penn State's Brandywine campus.
The graph shows two apparent seismic events, circled to indicate cheers triggered by Bryce Harper and Alec Bohm's homeruns. But Professor of Earth Sciences, Laura Guertin, says this never happened.
"We had nothing like that that would have been recorded in the state of Pennsylvania in the last 24 hours," Guertin said.
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In fact, the picture attached to the tweet is not from Penn State Brandywine's seismograph system. Guertin says her team noted a few "blips" on their seismometer last night, but none that could have come from Citizens Bank Park.
"Penn State Brandywine campus is 20 miles away from the stadium," explained Guertin. "Other universities and professional sports teams have put actual seismometers inside their stadiums during games, just to try to do these measurements for fun, and they barely record a magnitude 1 earthquake, if they do."
So while she encourages Phillies fans to get as loud as possible for the players, she warns: it's not going to literally move mountains.
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"We're not going to be able to generate enough movement in the planet to get anything picked up on a seismometer," Guertin said. "It's exciting! I would not discourage anyone from doing any of the cheering that they're doing in the stadium or cheering at their homes, but it's not going to be something that's a seismic event."
