Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · 13h

A magnitude 7.6 earthquake occurred about 10 minutes ago in the Mindanao region of the Philippines, triggering all stations in our southeast Australian network. It’s offshore and around 50km, so hopefully far enough to not cause too much damage or trigger a tsunami.

1 10 26

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · 3d

He looks cool, but I can assure you he isn’t. That’s my big brother!

1 1

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · 21d

Here's the @auscope.bsky.social Seismometers in Schools recording this morning's M7.8 Kamchatka earthquake. Data and network visualisation is from SRC's Seismosphere.
The 24-hour single station view from Nhulunbuy in the Northern Territory shows the seismometer detecting the earth ringing for hours!

2 6

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · 21d

ABC News Breakfast asked me to drop by to comment on this morning's M7.8 earthquake, an aftershock on the M8.8 from late July. I think I'm getting better at explaining crustal stress in plain language, but then I go and call Kamchatka an island instead of a peninsula🤦‍♂️
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09...

Magnitude 7.8 earthquake hits Russia's Kamchatka

Follow the latest news headlines from Australia's most trusted source. Read in-depth expert analysis and watch live coverage on ABC News.

www.abc.net.au

6

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · 24d

Is 200 earthquakes in just over a month normal for southeast Australia? It is, if your seismic network is dense enough and you’re dedicated to detailed data analysis. Staff at the Seismology Research Centre have manually located more than 35000 earthquakes over the last 50 years.

1 7

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · 27d

Another large earthquake just struck off Kamchatka, Russia. USGS reports magnitude 7.7. Energy waves now arriving in Australia.

2 21 54

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · Aug 29

Question for earthquake instrumentation people: what's the distinction between a "Low Gain" and a "High Gain" Seismometer?
What's the V/m/s level above of below which we define the Instrument Code as H or L?
Old school passives were generally under 400V/m/s. Is that it?
ds.iris.edu/ds/nodes/dmc...

NSF SAGE: SEED Channel Naming

ds.iris.edu

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · Aug 27

What’s a funny or clever collective noun for your (or any other) occupation? Make one up in the comments, or like the one in there that you think is the best so far.

6

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · Aug 16

Thanks for picking that up. We need to update our event names in our catalogue

1 1

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · Aug 16

This morning's magnitude 5.6 earthquake is the largest to have occurred in southeast Queensland since the magnitude 5.6 earthquake off Fraser Island in 2015. The Fraser Is quake was followed by magnitude 5.4 and 5.2 aftershocks in the following days, a reminder that further large events are possible

1 8 30

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · Aug 16

#earthquake #gympie #queensland #brisbane

4 18

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · Aug 16

#earthquake #gympie #queensland #brisbane

2

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · Aug 15

Search for Starter Packs - they are a good way to find people to follow. I’d also suggest editing your profile to add your name, photo and bio so people can find you. go.bsky.app/ND4oS9k

2 5

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · Aug 15

I think I’ve got you all, but if you’re a seismologist that’s following me and I’m not following you back, let me know with a like. Sometimes I miss notifications or don’t notice the role in a bio.

4

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · Aug 13

The wiggly lines of a seismogram can sometimes hide small but important signals at other frequencies. This is why we also look at spectrograms!
Interesting recent recordings include #kangaroos #rockfalls #sonicbooms from meteors & rockets, and crowds at #football #travisscott & #taylorswift concerts

1 6

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · Aug 12

Some schools can get involved with Science Week by looking at their seismographs to see the magnitude 6.1 earthquake that occurred in West Papua an hour ago. There are about 50 schools across the country with an @auscope.bsky.social seismograph. Here's what they recorded, as seen on Seismosphere

1 4

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · Aug 11

Yep, there it is! Recorded at a station north of Daylesford.

1 11

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · Aug 11

Let's see is we can find this non-earthquake on our seismographs! Last week we detected the NSW rockfall, and last night a meteor shook houses in central Victoria.
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08...

1 12 38

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · Aug 8

I’ve been wanting to get this into the wild for ages, and we’re almost there. Hopefully this will make our software even more accessible and useful. More features and fixes coming too. This is just a sneak peek.

Seismology Research Centre @earthquakes.au · Aug 8

Waves of Colour! There’s a new version of Waves coming that brings dark mode, amplitude based waveform colours, and 42 options for the spectrogram colour scheme. Waves is a free app anyone can use for waveform analysis and earthquake location and magnitude calculation. www.src.com.au/downloads/wa...

1 5

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · Aug 7

Oops, got the local time wrong. It was at 1505 UTC, which makes it 1:05am on August 2. 🤦‍♂️

5

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · Aug 7

A colleague noticed this Facebook post about a massive rockfall in the Blue Mountains, so I looked at the overnight records to see if it was visible. The closest station was 30km away, and a spike in the spectrogram at 3:05am had me check other nearby stations, which all rumbled for about a minute.

1 5 33

Reposted by Adam Pascale

Brandon Bishop @brandontbishop.bsky.social · Aug 5

Probably a good time to do this:

*Do people have questions about earthquakes?*

We have a lot of seismologists on Bluesky and we are very willing to answer whatever questions you might have....

5 23 52

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · Aug 5

I grabbed the spreadsheet from volcano.si.edu and plotted the date of each eruption (since 1900: 🤪Excel) versus the duration (not severity) of the eruption. For readability I clipped it at 10K days. One in Guatemala started in 1922, only ending last May! Those on the sloped edge haven't yet ended.

3 3 5

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · Aug 4

The longest period on record without an 8+ was over 7 years, and a significantly larger earthquake didn’t occur for almost another 20 years. The earth is complicated. Stress doesn’t build at the same rate everywhere, areas have different capacity for stress, and everything is constantly changing!

3

Adam Pascale @seislologist.bsky.social · Aug 4

That first graph in the article took a while to process. Active volcanoes appear to be on the increase, but it’s based on reports. If we plotted earthquake activity based on intensity reports alone we’d probably see spikes following major events, and a baseline rise as science communication improved

3