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posted by martyb on Tuesday December 05 2017, @07:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the buh-bye! dept.

Gravitational wave detectors could provide advance notice of seismic waves caused by powerful earthquakes (magnitude 8.5 and greater), allowing a little more time for people to evacuate (particularly at coastal regions that may be endangered by a tsunami):

Gravity signals that race through the ground at the speed of light could help seismologists get a better handle on the size of large, devastating quakes soon after they hit, a study suggests. The tiny changes in Earth's gravitational field, created when the ground shifts, arrive at seismic-monitoring stations well before seismic waves.

"The good thing we can do with these signals is have quick information on the magnitude of the quake," says Martin Vallée, a seismologist at the Paris Institute of Earth Physics.

Seismometers in China and South Korea picked up gravity signals immediately after the magnitude-9.1 Tohoku earthquake that devastated parts of Japan in 2011, Vallée and his colleagues report in Science on December 1. The signals appear as tiny accelerations on seismic-recording equipment, more than a minute before the seismic waves show up.

Observations and modeling of the elastogravity signals preceding direct seismic waves (DOI: 10.1126/science.aao0746) (DX)

Related: First Joint Detection of Gravitational Waves by LIGO and Virgo
The Nobel Physics Prize Has Been Awarded to 3 Scientists for Discoveries in Gravitational Waves
"Kilonova" Observed Using Gravitational Waves, Sparking Era of "Multimessenger Astrophysics"


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 05 2017, @03:24PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 05 2017, @03:24PM (#605664) Journal
    Earthquake prediction may never be good enough to use for most emergency preparedness. The current sketchy bit certainly isn't. What's effective about the approach in the story is that using current technology, it can potentially detect an ongoing massive earthquake and gives the most warning possible under the situation.