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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)
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by jasnw on Wednesday December 06 2017, @05:44AM
So, it takes incredibly high-precision specially-designed instruments to find gravitational wave signals from the collision of two black holes, and yet a couple of standard run-of-the-mill seismometers picked up gravitational waves from an earthquake? Why do I have a real hard time putting any faith in this analysis? My experience is that the earthquake precursor crowd is a largely a bunch of snake-oil types. My research field is ionospheric physics, and there is an ongoing battle between these 'oh look, there's an earthquake precursor' types looking at all kinds of ionospheric measurements and seeing precursors everywhere and people who know the limits of those measurements. Dig down deep enough, and it's people looking to keep their research funding alive or to tap into another source after the agency they've been fleecing catches on to their shenanigans.