New
#1
#Earthquake! Tweets Beat Official Quake Alerts
SourceThe fastest earthquake alerts come from social media networks, not the U.S Geological Survey's seismic underground sensors, ongoing research finds.
As soon as the Earth starts rumbling, Twitter users flood the network with pithy, publicly available tweets that the USGS uses to pinpoint an earthquake's source in less than a minute, according to findings presented May 2 at the Seismological Society of America's annual meeting in Anchorage, Alaska. Without Twitter, it takes the USGS anywhere from two to 20 minutes to precisely locate an earthquake and judge its size with seismometers, which are instruments that monitor ground motion.
Source 2