Or at least I hope that’s what lead to this:<\/p>\n
A 10,000-kilometre-long\u00a0fibre-optic cable owned by Google that is at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean<\/a>\u00a0can be used to detect deep-sea seismic activity and ocean waves.<\/p>\n
Zhongwen Zhan at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and his colleagues, including researchers at Google, used traffic data from one of the tech giant\u2019s optical fibres to measure changes in pressure and strain in the cable. Using this data, they could detect\u00a0earthquakes<\/a>\u00a0and ocean waves called swells generated by storms.<\/p>\n
Over a nine-month period, the team recorded around 30 ocean storm swell events and around 20 earthquakes over magnitude 5 \u2013 strong enough to damage buildings \u2013 including the\u00a0magnitude 7.4 earthquake event near Oaxaca, Mexico, in June 2020<\/a>. The team had wanted to measure a\u00a0tsunami<\/a>, but none occurred during the monitoring. [“Google uses underwater fibre-optic cable to detect earthquakes<\/a>,” Priti Parikh, <\/em>NewScientist<\/strong> (6 March 2021)]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is one of those unplanned science research efforts that I generally find delightful. I can imagine the phone call: Hey! We just realized something really cool<\/em> …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Or at least I hope that’s what lead to this: A 10,000-kilometre-long\u00a0fibre-optic cable owned by Google that is at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean\u00a0can be used to detect deep-sea seismic activity and ocean waves. Zhongwen Zhan at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and his colleagues, including \u2026 Continue reading