Our Earth Keeps Pulsating every 26 Seconds – Does Earth has a Heartbeat?


You can feel something pulsing in your chest as a human. Your heart is the one that beats. What if I told you that the planet, who is also our mother, has a heartbeat that beats every 26 seconds? You wouldn't have believed me, but as soon as you finish reading this essay, you will. a planet that pulses for unknown reasons. Do you find this intriguing? If so, continue reading as we try to unravel this enigma.

Every 26 seconds, the Earth trembles. It's not much—certainly not enough to feel—but it's enough for scientists and researchers to see a detectable "blip" on their detectors across many continents. Despite the fact that this pulse has been noted for many years, scientists are unable to reach a consensus as to its cause.

Origin of Earth Pulsating Every 26 Seconds

A research scientist named Jack Oliver, who was employed at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory at the time, first recorded the pulse, or "microseism" in geologist parlance. His latter research, which offered some initial support for shifting tectonic plates, is what made him most famous. The pulse, according to Oliver, was produced "somewhere in the southern or equatorial Atlantic Ocean," and it was highest in the Northern Hemisphere during the summer (or winter in the Southern Hemisphere).

Jack didn't have the resources in the 1960s as he does today in 2005, according to Mike Ritzwoller, a seismologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, whose team identified the unusual pulse decades later. Jack used paper records because there were no digital seismometers in use at the time.

In 1980, Gary Holcomb, a geoscientist with the United States Geological Survey, looked into the odd microseism and found that storms are when it is strongest. However, the majority of his and Oliver's labour would be lost in the process, and we would not be aware of the constant seismic drumming beneath our feet.

Greg Bensen, a PhD student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, began utilising seismic data in his lab in 2005. He asked him to describe the project he had been working on when his advisor entered. Ritzwoller claims that Bensen looked up some data and there it was: A strong signal coming from a great distance. Postdoctoral research scientist Nikolai Shapiro and I noticed it right away, but we didn't know what it was because it was so weird.

The crew looked into the abnormalities from every angle they could because they were perplexed. Were their tools defective in some way? Or maybe their studies? Or was earthquake activity actually present? Everything pointed in that direction. Even better, they were able to locate the pulse's exact source in the Gulf of Guinea, which is located down Africa's western coast. Additionally, they rediscovered Oliver and Holcomb's work, and in 2006 they released a research in Geophysical Research Letters. Since then, no one has, however, provided confirmation of the cause of the regular seismic activity. While many individuals think waves are to blame, others think volcanic activity is to blame.

Earth Pulsates Every Time

Even while this particular pulse is remarkable, it is well known that seismicity happens when there are no earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. We are constantly surrounded by a subtle seismic background noise. Ritzwoller claims that the sun is mostly to blame for seismic noise. He asserts that the sun heats the entire world more intensely at its equator than at its poles, resulting in winds, storms, ocean currents, and waves. The energy of a wave is then transmitted to the ground when it hits a cliff. It sounds like you're trying to tap on your desk, according to Ritzwoller. The area around your knuckle is deformed, but the deformation is then spread throughout the entire table. If one places their hand, or perhaps their cheek, on the table, a person seated on the other side of the table can feel the vibration.

Locating the 26-Second Pulse

Another graduate student, Garrett Euler, entered the Washington University in St. Louis seismologist Doug Wiens' lab six years later. Euler further restricted the location of the pulse's source to the Gulf of Guinea's Bight of Bonny. Additionally, he contended that the most likely source was vibrations from the coast. According to Wiens, the difference in water pressure that occurs when a wave travels across the ocean may not have much of an effect on the ocean floor. Similar to how beating on a desk deforms the surface, the force that strikes the continental shelf causes the ocean floor to be bent and causes seismic bursts that reflect the wave motion. At the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America in 2013, Euler presented the findings of his investigation.

Some people, however, weren't entirely persuaded. The 26-second pulse was most likely triggered by volcanoes rather than waves, according to a team led by Yingjie Xia of the Research Center of Geodesy and Geophysics in Wuhan, China, in the same year. The So Tomé archipelago in the Bight of Bonny is the location of the pulse's origin, which is astonishingly close to a volcano. There is unquestionably at least one other place on Earth where a volcano produces a microseism like this one. It's in Japan.

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