^graph from the Royal Observatory of Belgium’s Twitter account
And now for a little bit of science that doesn’t involve viruses and vaccines! I’m fascinated by the ways that coronavirus can be measured through other aspects of human behavior (for instance, carbon emissions are plummeting right now). Geologists can pick up more than just earthquakes and tremors on devices called seismometers; they also measure the “roar” of human activity. As Celeste Labedz, a graduate student in geophysics at the California Institute of Technology tweets: “Human-made sources of ground motion (like cars, industry, & even walking) decrease as folks stay home, so isolation efforts can be observed with seismometers.” This phenomenon has been confirmed in many places around the globe. This period of relative quietude is giving scientists an opportunity to study other geologic occurrences that would normally be shrouded by human activity.