Papua New Guinea earthquake sound waves recorded in Ireland

Irish seismographs picked up the sound waves from an earthquake halfway across the world in Papua New Guinea on Tuesday morning.

The magnitude 6.4 quake struck at 3:05 p.m. Irish Standard Time, according to the US Geological Survey.

Its sound waves took just ten minutes to travel the 14,000 kilometres to Dublin, where they were picked up by a seismograph managed by the Irish National Seismic Network.

BMKG, Indonesia’s meteorological service, has categorized the event as a shallow earthquake, triggered by the activity of the Sorong Fault, which extends toward the Bismarck Sea.

Earthquakes generate seismic waves that travel through the Earth, including sound waves called P-waves, which can propagate across the globe. These waves travel at different speeds depending on the Earth’s layers and the type of wave.

Other recent large earthquakes picked up by Irish-based seismographs include those in Turkey (23 April), Tonga (31 March), and Myanmar (28 March).