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posted by martyb on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the I'm-all-shook-up dept.

Just before 9.30am on Sunday 11 November, a series of unusual seismic pulses rippled around the world almost undetected.

The waves rang for over 20 minutes, emanating about 15 miles off the shores of Mayotte - a tiny island in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Africa.

From here, they reverberated across Africa, setting off geological sensors in Zambia, Kenya, and Ethiopia.

They crossed the Atlantic, and were picked up in Chile, New Zealand, Canada, and even Hawaii nearly 11,000 miles away, the National Geographic reports.

Despite their huge range, the waves were apparently not felt by anybody. However, one person monitoring the US Geological Survey's live stream of seismogram displays did notice the unusual waveform and posted it to Twitter, sparking the interest of other geologists and earthquake enthusiasts.

[...] The bizarre waveform is what scientists call "monochromatic". Earthquakes normally produce waves of so many different frequencies, the wave readings appear more jumbled.

But the mystery waveform from Mayotte was a crisp zigzag, which repeated after steady 17-second intervals.

"They're too nice. They're too perfect to be nature," joked the University of Glasgow's Helen Robinson, who is study[ing] for a PhD in applied volcanology.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/earthquake-seismic-waves-mayotte-madagascar-volcanic-activity-science-a8659236.html


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:31AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:31AM (#769992)

    It looks like the same type of signals ligo has been calling gravitational waves.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @07:13AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @07:13AM (#769997)

    Hmm,
    Someone testing Mr Brin's GAZER maybe?
    (I borrowed my then Boss's copy of Earth [davidbrin.com] 16 years ago...I really must return it someday..)

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 05 2018, @01:52PM (1 child)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 05 2018, @01:52PM (#770063) Journal
      I still find it funny that Switzerland gets nuked because it has rich people. The whole thing reeked of wish fulfillment, but not enough that I wouldn't read it.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @05:06PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @05:06PM (#770151)

        It's entertaining enough, I suppose nuking Switzerland to kill the Gnomes was a wee bit of overkill (fun, but overkill as we all know they only infest Zürich...)

        I've got a badly formatted epub version of it on my Nook found on a trawl of the wilds of the interwibblz which is a pain to read, I might dig out the 'borrowed' copy from whatever storage box it's lurking in.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @02:38PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @02:38PM (#770080)

      I was more thinking this type of thing wouldnt be filtered out by ligo if it was so unexpected and only got noticed by an amateur digging through siesmic data.