Why Scientists Triggered 8,000 Earthquakes Below Swiss Alps

2 min readUpdated: May 11, 2026 09:05 PM IST

Scientists deliberately triggered 8,000 thousand small earthquakes in southern Switzerland below the ground under safe and carefully monitored conditions. The experiment took place deep beneath the Swiss Alps at an underground research facility known as the BedrettoLab.

The lab is located inside a tunnel that stretches five kilometers through the mountain. The scientists travel using the help of special electric vehicles through narrow tunnels.

The research was led by Professor Domenico Giardini of ETH Zurich along with his team. The team celebrated after the success of the experiment. “It is perfect, because we have a kilometre and a half of mountain on top of us… and we can look very closely at the faults, how they move, when they move, and we can make them move ourselves,” Giardini told AFP.

Why was the experiment conducted

The goal was to better understand how deep earthquakes occur and to find ways to reduce the risks they may pose in the future, reported AFP.

The core aim of the research was to understand how earthquakes are triggered, specifically how shifting rocks and building pressure deep inside the Earth set them off.

The project was named FEAR-2 (Fault Activation and Earthquake Rupture), with several European countries also taking part.

The experiment continued for four days and hundreds of sensors were installed to record the moments of the trigger. The magnitude of the earthquake didn’t record the targeted scale.

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“We did not reach the target magnitude that we had set, but we reached just below,” Giardini said to AFP.

According to the scientist’s report, the intensity recorded was too low to be felt by normal people on the surface. But the machine underground detected every moment required for the study.

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