Finding the planet’s pulse
Try a browser with hardware acceleration enabled. The earthquake list and sound player still work.
QuakePing turns earthquake catalogue data into light and sound. Each ripple and note represents one reported earthquake.
Each playing quake shows its magnitude beside its cylinder. Larger quakes make wider cylinders, larger ripples and fuller, longer notes.
Deeper quakes make taller cylinders. Musical bass and resonant gong play deeper quakes as lower notes. Classic bell plays larger quakes as higher notes. Shallow quakes are amber, intermediate quakes teal, and deep quakes violet.
Replay preserves the spacing between earthquakes, compressed to your chosen duration. Follow pings turns the globe toward the latest earthquake as its note begins. Drag or zoom to take control, then turn Follow pings on to resume.
Sounds, ripples and cylinder heights are symbolic encodings. Cylinder height uses a fixed visual scale, capped at 700 km. Ring size is not a shaking footprint. Live mode plays newly reported events; publication can follow the earthquake by several minutes. Small-earthquake coverage varies around the world.
USGS earthquake catalogue · globe.gl & Three.js · Natural Earth geography · Plate boundaries: Peter Bird / Hugo Ahlenius, Nordpil, ODC-By 1.0. Sources & licences.
Inspired by the remembered experience of QuakeViz. An independent project.
Musical bass and resonant gong follow depth; Classic bell follows magnitude. Classic bell is inspired by the ringing tones of QuakeViz.
Phone speaker reduces deep bass and peak level. Selected automatically for touch devices; choose full range when using headphones. This choice resets when you reload.
The timeline bars count earthquakes in each time interval. Each earthquake has its own note, based on your pitch setting. Two equally tall bars can contain different earthquake magnitudes and depths, so they can sound different.
These buttons preview the selected sound. Bass and ringing overtones give each earthquake its own presence. Live listening continues in background tabs while your browser allows it. Phones may pause audio when the screen locks; press Play again if listening stops.
Replay a day, an aftershock sequence, or a longer chapter in the planet’s history.
Dates use UTC. Up to 31 days per search. The current magnitude filter applies; lower it and load again for smaller events.