January 09, 2020 Thursday 03:06:38 PM IST
Fibre Optic Cables as Seismic Network

Placing
seismometers under the sea is prohibitively expensive but an international team
of scientists led by California Institute of Technology (CALTECH) has used
fiber optic communications cables installed at the bottom of the North Sea to
create a giant seismic network, tracking both earthquakes and ocean waves. The
fact that the fiber network was able to detect and record a magnitude-8.2
earthquake near Fiji in August 2018 proves the ability of the technology to
fill in some of the massive blind spots in the global seismic network, says
Caltech graduate student Ethan Williams. Williams is the lead author of a study
on the project that was published by Nature Communications on Dec. 18.
"Fiber optic communications cables are growing more and more common on the
sea floor. Rather than place a whole new device, we can tap into some of this
fiber and start observing seismicity immediately," Williams says. The
project relies on a technology called distributing acoustic sensing, or DAS.
DAS was developed for energy exploration but has been repurposed for
seismology. DAS sensors shoot a beam of light down a fiber optic cable.
RECOMMENDED NEWS
23-03-2022
16-03-2022
15-03-2022
28-12-2021
23-12-2021
17-12-2021