https://www.sciencealert.com/the-internet-itself-most-powerful-earthquake-detection-system-ever-fibre-optic-seismic PETER DOCKRILL 6 JUL 2018 (spainter_vfx/iStock) The internet isn't your phone. It's not Instagram, YouTube, or Netflix. Behind those apparitions, the internet is actually a sprawling matrix of hundreds of undersea data cables, criss-crossing the ocean for some 885,000 km ( 550,000 miles ). That's where your Facebook and FOMO come from. But those hidden conduits aren't just useful for relaying data - this massive web of infrastructure could also give us an unprecedented network for detecting earthquakes, new research reveals. In a new study led by volcanologist Philippe Jousset from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, researchers sent pulses of laser light through a 15-kilometre (9.3 mile) stretch of conventional optical fibre internet cable in Iceland, which they used as a proxy to measure seismic activity. "Ou
https://www.ofsoptics.com/fiber-optic-cables-as-undersea-seismic-monitors/ Detecting ocean-floor seismic activity is crucial to our understanding of the interior structure and dynamic behavior of the Earth. However, with 70% of the planet’s surface covered by water and only a handful of permanent, ocean-bottom seismometer stations, very little overall seismic activity is actually recorded. Now, a group of researchers from the United Kingdom, Italy and Malta have found a way to use submarine fiber optic cables already deployed on the ocean floor as seismic detectors. In a paper published in the journal Science , the research group outlines how they discovered this capability and how it would operate. Giuseppe Marra, a member of the group, was testing an underground fiber cable between two locations in the United Kingdom. Noticing a small slowdown in signal delivery, he traced it to tiny vibrations bending the light. He then determined that the vibrations were caused by a remot