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This is scientific American's 60 second science.

I'm Christopher and Tagata.

Humans are a really noisy species, hammering and digging, flying and driving, delivering heavy cargo all over the world, and all that activity creates seismic noise, which masks delicate signals from far away small earthquakes.

Raphael Duplon, a seismologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico,

compares listening for small earthquakes during normal times

to sitting at a wedding at a table far away from the band.

You can't really make out the music because there are so many people laughing and talking in between

you and the loudspeakers.

And so now the lockdown is like coming during the rehearsal. No one is talking. So even though you're far away, the speakers are loud enough for you to listen to all the songs and clearly identify them.

During the global lockdown, Duplan says he and his colleagues have been able to detect songs,

in this case seismic signals they didn't even know existed.

And now that they've identified those signals,

they'll be able to look back at decades of data

and use these newly discovered seismic fingerprints

to better identify small earthquakes like this in the past. The study, co-authored by more than 70

seismologists from around the world, appears in the journal Science. In addition

to unmasking new seismic phenomena, the study also demonstrates how seismic data could be used

to track human activity and movement,

like traffic patterns in a certain region,

...