Church bells and ground motions

Abstract

Although the primary objective of seismic stations is the recording of waves generated by natural seismicity, the sensors can detect vibrations generated by different sources of natural and anthropogenic origin. The interest in identifying these sources has increased in the last years with the use of background seismic vibrations to obtain images of the crustal structure by tomographic methods and to monitor different natural processes. We present here a very particular case of these type of sources, the bell ringing in churches to indicate the passage of time. In some particular cases, the vibrations generated by the ringing of the bells are recorded in seismic stations installed near the bell towers. We review different examples throughout Europe of this particular kind of seismic records to illustrate how the seismic records can provide information on the traditions followed to mark the hours in some European countries, which turn out to be very different. The objective is not only to publicize this curious records, but also to show that bridges can be built between very different scientific disciplines, such as seismology and social sciences, since the seismic data offers a new tool to researchers interested in investigating ethnographic aspects related to how the passage of time is marked in different European cultures.

For Whom the Bell Tolls: Practitioners’ Views on Bell-Ringing Practice in Contemporary Society in New South Wales (Australia)

“…A number of academic studies have examined the acoustic properties of religious structures, such as functional (Desarnaulds et al 2002;Alvarez-Morales and Martellotta 2015), liturgical (Westermeyer 2009;Prasad 2015), technical (Ansay and Zannin 2016;Álvarez-Morales et al 2014;Orfali 2007;Orfali and Ahnert 2006;Soeta et al 2013;Kumar et al 2008) and workplace safety aspects (García et al 2019;Felipe Silva and Cabral 2011), the effects of wind direction and strength on sound distribution (Trikootam and Hornikx 2019), and the environmental effects of bell ringing in terms of ground motion (Diaz 2020). At least one study assessed people's perceptions of nighttime bell ringing with regard to sleep disturbance (Brink et al 2011), while another tried to examine the effects of bell ringing on house prices in the vicinity of churches (Brandt et al 2013).…”

Hierarchical Exploration of Continuous Seismograms With Unsupervised Learning

“…However, non‐volcanic tremors are often of weak amplitude with poorly defined signal characteristics; their detection is a more challenging task than detecting earthquakes. Other than signals with tectonic origin seismometers also record the oceanic microseisms (see e.g., Ebeling, 2012 , for a recent review), rockfalls and other mass movements (e.g., Deparis et al., 2008 ; Lacroix & Helmstetter, 2011 ), ground and air traffic (e.g., Meng & Ben‐Zion, 2018 ; Riahi & Gerstoft, 2015 ) or other kind of human‐induced sources (such as church bells in Diaz, 2020 ). The mixing of all these sources renders a complex seismic wavefield that makes the analysis and interpretation of seismic records difficult, especially if seismic data are the only data available.…”

Contemporary Sound Practices: Church Bells and Bell Ringing in New South Wales, Australia

“…A number of studies have considered the internal acoustic properties of religious structures from a technical and workplace safety aspect [17][18][19], as well as in terms of their cultural heritage dimensions [20][21][22][23]; the effects of bell ringing on ground motion [24]; the soundscapes associated with places of worship [25][26][27][28][29]; people's perceptions of evening bell ringing with reference to impression and loudness [30,31]; and people's preferences in bell ringing in terms of congruence of the soundscape [32].…”