TOKYO - Tokyo residents were rattled on Thursday morning after an alert broadcast to smartphones across the capital warned of an impending magnitude 7.3 earthquake about to hit the capital - only for no quake to arrive.
The system mistook the epicentre of a magnitude 5.8 earthquake off Japan's coast, calculating it to be about 450km further away. That caused it to overestimate the size of the quake and trigger the alert. The warning was issued to Tokyo and 14 other prefectures - areas that account for about half of Japan's total population of 126 million - and halted trains and subway lines in the capital for hours.
The alert is fully automated. A network of seismographs spans the country, measuring the initial P-waves when an earthquake strikes. Computers then collate the data and issue estimates of the potential size and likely location of the quake.
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