About Earthquakes | Rescent Earthquakes

Bomb blasts 23-09-2023

On 23 September 2023, 2 ten-ton bombs from the Second World War were detonated again in Göttingen. The double detonation took place at about 16:51:14 CEST and generated an earthquake of magnitude 1.5 (mean estimate), which was well registered by the historical seismographs (station GTT) and the modern STS-2 seismometer (station GTTG) at Wiechert’s earthquake observatory located 3 km to the east.

But even at the stations Clausthal-Zellerfeld (CLZ) and Christianenhaus (CHRS), which are about 43 km and 61 km away from the Göttingen earthquake station, the bomb blasts could still be clearly registered!

Karl-Heinz Jäckel of the Geoforschungszentrum in Potsdam compared the data of GTTG with those of CLZ and CHRS (see presentation of the 60-second interval from 16:51 to 16:52 CEST) and calculated a magnitude Ml approx. 1.5. The maximum ground motion at the Göttingen earthquake station was about 2 micrometers.

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