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martyb writes:

Note: This story is over four years old, but I just came upon it and thought other Soylentils might find it interesting.

5 Things That Sound, Move, or Smell Like a Nuclear Explosion:

After most of the world's nations signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, in 1996, they set up a new commission to watch out for clandestine explosions. Since then the commission (CTBTO[*]) has wired the world with hundreds of seismometers, infrasound detectors, radionuclide sniffers, and underwater microphones. The stations send their data to the CTBTO's headquarters in Vienna, Austria, where it is analyzed for signs of a secret bomb. But the system keeps picking up other things, too—which is sometimes a problem for the system and sometimes a boon to science. Here are some of the things that can at first seem like nuclear tests:

In the course of the efforts to detect clandestine nuclear tests, these devices have also detected:

• Space rocks
• Aurora (Northern and Southern Lights)
• Whales
• Tsunamis
• Nuclear-power-plant disasters
• Medical-isotope manufacturing

[*] CTBTO: Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization

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