Metallica’s performance in Athens was so powerful that it was detected by seismographs in Greece.
The iconic band opened the European leg of their M72 World Tour with a concert at OAKA Stadium, which drew over 90,000 people. Given that Metallica hadn’t performed in Greece for almost 16 years, it was a big deal for fans.
When the band started performing one of their early songs, «Creeping Death,» specialists at the Institute of Geodynamics of the National Observatory of Athens recorded so-called «concert earthquakes.» These are microvibrations that occur when tens of thousands of people simultaneously jump, move, and stomp to the rhythm of the music. In effect, Metallica fans quite literally made the ground shake.
For scientists, it was also significant, as they plan to use the data collected from seismographs to study how the crowd’s energy was transmitted to the soil around the stadium. Similar studies are common at other large concerts and sporting events, where the movement of large crowds creates measurable vibrations.
