Late Sunday morning, seismic sensors in Mexico City detected what was reported to be a small earthquake. But it was triggered in an “artificial manner,” according to the group monitoring the gauges.
“Possibly because of mass jumping,” said the group, the Institute of Geologic and Atmospheric Investigations in Mexico, which said that at least two of its sensors picked up the activity.
The cause of that mass jumping? Moments before, the Mexican men’s national soccer team had scored a goal against powerhouse Germany in their group-stage match in the World Cup in Moscow...
...While nobody was questioning the degree of happiness experienced by the nation, some experts challenged the claim of seismic activity circulated by the Institute of Geologic and Atmospheric Investigations.
El País, the Spanish newspaper, quoted Arturo Iglesias, an investigator with the Institute of Geophysics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, saying that an earthquake cannot be induced by “the scattered activity of fans.”
In a blog post on Sunday night, the Institute of Geologic and Atmospheric Investigations appeared to push back at the doubters, clarifying that the event was imperceptible to the general population. This sort of occurrence can be referred to as an “artificial” earthquake, the institute said, “to clearly establish that it is not a geological event.”...
