Geophonetics in Norway
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"Every Time Norway Scores at the World Cup the City of Bergen Trembles":
The city of Bergen, Norway, shook on the night of June 22–23, not because there was an earthquake or an unknown geological phenomenon. But because the Norwegian national team scored a goal during the 2026 World Cup. This curious phenomenon was reported by a team of researchers from the University of Bergen, who found that fan celebrations produce vibrations in the ground so intense they can be detected even by highly sensitive scientific instruments like seismometers.
Celebratory geo-linguistics aside, I wondered about the period before "But" in that paragraph, especially because what follows "But" is just a because clause, parallel to another one in the previous phrase:
not because there was an earthquake […]
But because the Norwegian national team scored a goal
And the scalar implicature of "even" in "even by highly sensitive scientific instruments" seems upside down. Compare "…so intense they can be detected even by relatively crude instruments", vs."so intense they can be detected only by highly sensitive instruments".
Maybe the reason is this (from the bottom of the story):
This story originally appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian.
But here's the Italian version, which doesn't seem offer an explanation:
La città di Bergen ha tremato nella notte tra il 22 e il 23 giugno scorsi, non perché si è verificato un terremoto o un fenomeno geologico sconosciuto. Ma perché la nazionale norvegese ha segnato durante i Mondiali di calcio 2026. A raccontare questo curioso fenomeno è stato un team di ricercatori dell'Università di Bergen, secondo cui sarebbero proprio i festeggiamenti dei tifosi ai gol della nazionale di calcio a produrre vibrazioni nel suolo così intense che possono essere rilevate anche da strumenti scientifici molto sensibili, come i sismometri.
Commenters may be able to enlighten us about Italian punctuation norms, and the direction of anche 's scalar implicatures. My guess is that Italian is just as variable as English, both on the former and the latter question, but the issues are subtle ones.
Anna said,
June 28, 2026 @ 11:18 am
As a native Italian speaker with good English, both sound pretty much as weird in Italian as in English.
The second would work (in both languages) if you removed "very sensitive", can't see any other simple way to fix it.
JPL said,
June 28, 2026 @ 4:22 pm
"… so intense they can even be detected by …."
Richard Hershberger said,
June 29, 2026 @ 4:16 am
The two oddities strike me as the sort of thing I often see in unedited prose, which nowadays often includes professionally published prose.
Markonsea said,
June 29, 2026 @ 7:22 am
“ … not with a bang but a whimper.” (TSE)
The grammatical error is the full stop preceding “But”/“Ma”. Anything other than a comma would be equally wrong.
Chris Button said,
June 29, 2026 @ 9:40 pm
It grates grammatically. I kinda like it stylistically.
Pedro said,
June 30, 2026 @ 4:56 am
But "so intense they can be detected even by highly sensitive scientific instruments like seismometers" is wrong on multiple levels.
Even if you fix the inverted scalar implicature, you end up with either
1. "So intense they can be detected only by highly sensitive scientific instruments like seismometers", which is wrong because if they're so intense you won't need such sensitive instruments; or
2. "So subtle they can be detected only by highly sensitive scientific instruments like seismometers", which is also wrong because that's the opposite of the intended meaning.
Presumably the intention is something like "so intense they can be detected even without sensitive scientific instruments like seismometers". Polarity items like "even" (or "anche") introduce redundancy that helps us spot errors like this.
Jonathan Smith said,
June 30, 2026 @ 9:44 am
Funny as not facially incorrect — but "intense" relates to people hollering, "highly sensitive" relates to earth shaking. Correction: "so intense they can be detected by seismometers, sensors designed to detect earthquakes/volcanic eruptions"
Jim said,
July 2, 2026 @ 6:58 pm
Taylor Swift's "Eras Tour" resulted in detectable seismic activity in Seattle last year.
DCA said,
July 4, 2026 @ 6:26 pm
Actual seismologist here, to comment that what it should be "strong [intense is also applicable] to be detected far away by seismometers, designed to measure even very small ground motions". The vibrations can only be detected with seismometers, but at the same time most sporting events don't produce vibrations strong enough even for that, unless you are close by.
Probably all too complicated for a brief news note. See doi 10.1785/0220180078 for more.