How an Android phone measured the Boksburg earthquake

When a 5.0-magnitude earthquake rocked the Johannesburg area early Sunday morning, many thought they were dreaming. They turned to their phones for news, any news. Twitter has been flooded with tweets confirming the incident, but of course one cannot trust Twitter for the objective truth nowadays.

Instead, the confirmation came from the unlikely source of their own phones. If they are using Android devices, that is. Almost immediately, anyone opening Google on their phone was alerted that there had been an earthquake near Boksburg. Initially, it showed a size of 4.7, but it was quickly upgraded to 5.0.

The information arrived courtesy of a system introduced by Google in August 2020 that allows all Android phones to be part of the Android Earthquake Alerts System, wherever in the world users live.

“This means your Android phone can be a mini-seismometer, joining millions of other Android phones to form the world’s largest earthquake detection network,” Google declared at the time.

“All smartphones come with tiny accelerometers that can sense signals that an earthquake is occurring. If the phone detects something it thinks might be an earthquake, it sends a signal to our earthquake detection server, along with an approximate location of where the shaking occurred. The server then integrates the information from several phones to see if an earthquake is happening or not. We’re basically racing the speed of light (which is roughly how fast signals from a phone travel) against the speed of an earthquake. Lucky for us, the speed of light is much faster!”

Google said it will use the technology to share a quick and accurate view of the affected area on Google Search. When you search for “earthquake” or “earthquake near me,” relevant results appear for the area (see main image above), along with resources on what to do after an earthquake strikes.

For some of us, that’s not enough, especially if we want minute-by-minute updates on the impact or aftermath of an event or verification.

The go-to source for the follow-up is volcanodiscovery.com, which tracks both volcanoes and earthquakes. It also reported a magnitude 5.0 seismic event. The quake occurred south of Alberton, east of Johannesburg. Surprisingly, it measured more than 40 earthquakes above magnitude 4.0 in a 24-hour period. Of those, eight were higher than 5, and one was higher than 6.

This was a normal day in seismic activity around the world.

If you choose the “earthquakes near me” option, it turns out that there are regular small quakes throughout the area, but most are barely noticeable — it’s clear from the face that only a few reports of earthquakes came from the site. In contrast, the Alberton earthquake was reported by approximately 12,000 people.

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