Earthquakes Shape Health And Technology In Surprising Ways

In the world of science and technology, earthquakes have long been a source of both devastation and fascination. Two recent studies, published on January 14, 2026, have cast new light on the ways that seismic events—both natural and engineered—are shaping our understanding of human health and the future of wireless devices. While one team of researchers investigated the long-term health impacts of one of the most powerful earthquakes in modern history, another group developed a device capable of generating the tiniest artificial earthquakes on a chip, with the promise of revolutionizing everyday electronics.

Back in 2010, Ichiro Kawachi, a professor of social epidemiology at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, set out to study the predictors of healthy aging in Iwanuma, Japan. But his research took an unexpected turn on March 11, 2011, when a magnitude 9.1 earthquake—the fourth strongest recorded since 1900—struck just 50 miles from his study site. The quake triggered a massive tsunami, leaving widespread destruction in its wake. As Kawachi told Communications Psychology, "We had this unusual natural experiment where we had all the information about people’s lifestyle and health behaviors before the earthquake, and we could track people afterwards. It turned into a follow-up study of disaster survivors."

What Kawachi and his co-authors, including Yasuyuki Sawada of the University of Tokyo, discovered was both surprising and concerning. Among residents who lost their homes in the disaster, rates of overweight and obesity jumped from 25 percent before the earthquake to 35 percent three years later. In contrast, those whose homes were spared saw no significant change. "Overweight and obesity rates increased from 25 percent before the earthquake to 35 percent among people who lost their homes, whereas it remained pretty much level among people who did not experience this kind of asset loss," Kawachi explained. The findings didn’t stop there: rates of drinking and smoking also rose among those whose homes suffered heavy damage.

To understand why these unhealthy behaviors persisted, the researchers turned to psychology. They identified a phenomenon known as present bias—sometimes called hyperbolic discounting—as the likely culprit. Present bias describes the tendency to prefer immediate gratification over longer-term benefits, even when the latter are clearly better for one’s health. Kawachi’s team designed a version of the famous marshmallow test, asking participants whether they would prefer a smaller sum of money now or a larger sum later. By analyzing these choices, the researchers could quantify each person’s "internal discount rate"—essentially, their willingness to wait for a greater reward. The results showed a clear "dose response": the more severe the housing damage, the stronger the present bias.

To broaden their findings, the team also collected data from 187 survivors of a 2012 flood disaster in a village south of Manila, Philippines. The story was much the same: those who lost assets in the disaster showed increased rates of poor dietary habits, hypertension, and metabolic problems. According to Kawachi, "In that location, they also saw an increase in poor dietary habits, hypertension, and metabolic problems." Notably, these unhealthy behaviors and the increased present bias persisted for at least six years after the disasters, painting a sobering picture of the long-term impacts of asset loss and scarcity.

Interestingly, the study found that disaster survivors’ tolerance for risk did not change, suggesting that the observed behaviors were not simply due to a general increase in risk-taking. Rather, it was specifically people’s ability to delay gratification and invest in their future health that was affected. As Kawachi put it, "This is a very specific mechanism about people’s ability to forgo gratification, to invest for the future, and that’s another way of trying to think about these risk behaviors." The implications go beyond natural disasters: "There was widespread asset loss and scarcity during COVID," he noted, "and we also know that during COVID, all sorts of bad behavior increased: There was a rise in alcoholic cirrhosis, a rise in opioid poisoning." The research, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, suggests that interventions aimed at supporting long-term decision-making could be critical in the aftermath of both natural and economic disasters.

While Kawachi’s study tracked the ripples of a real earthquake through human lives, a team of engineers led by Matt Eichenfield at the University of Colorado Boulder has been busy making waves of their own—literally. Eichenfield and his collaborators at the University of Arizona and Sandia National Laboratories have developed a device called a surface acoustic wave (SAW) phonon laser, capable of generating the tiniest earthquakes imaginable on a chip. Their findings, published in Nature, could pave the way for smaller, faster, and more efficient wireless devices.

"SAWs devices are critical to many of the world’s most important technologies," Eichenfield explained. "They’re in all modern cell phones, key fobs, garage door openers, most GPS receivers, many radar systems and more." In smartphones, for example, SAWs act as tiny filters, converting radio signals into vibrations that can be easily processed and cleaned up before being sent back out as radio waves. Traditionally, generating these waves requires two chips and a power source, but Eichenfield’s team has managed to do it with a single chip and just a battery.

Their phonon laser is a marvel of modern engineering: a bar-shaped device, about half a millimeter long, made from layers of silicon, lithium niobate (a piezoelectric material), and indium gallium arsenide. When an electric current is applied, the device creates vibrations—surface acoustic waves—on the lithium niobate layer. These waves bounce back and forth, growing stronger each time they move forward, much like light bouncing between mirrors in a traditional laser. "Think of it almost like the waves from an earthquake, only on the surface of a small chip," said Alexander Wendt, lead author of the study.

The team’s device can generate SAWs at about 1 gigahertz (a billion times per second), with the potential to reach tens or even hundreds of gigahertz—far surpassing the roughly 4 gigahertz limit of traditional SAW devices. This leap in frequency could allow for the integration of all the radio wave processing needed in a smartphone onto a single chip, making devices smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient. "This phonon laser was the last domino standing that we needed to knock down," Eichenfield said. "Now we can literally make every component that you need for a radio on one chip using the same kind of technology."

It’s a striking juxtaposition: while one earthquake left a legacy of health challenges and behavioral shifts, another—artificial and microscopic—holds the promise of technological breakthroughs. Both studies remind us that the ripples of seismic events, whether natural or engineered, can travel far beyond their initial impact, shaping the future in unexpected ways.