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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Science Magazine [sciencemag.org]:

For the 19 December test, U.S. Department of Energy researchers set off a 50-ton chemical explosion roughly 300 meters underground to generate a magnitude-3 or -4 tremor—partly to verify the agency’s ability to detect underground nuclear explosions. But researchers also lofted two helium-filled balloons over the site, one tethered and another free floating, each a few hundred meters above the ground. The balloons carried barometers to measure changes in atmospheric pressure and detect the earthquake’s infrasound waves, low-frequency acoustic vibrations below the threshold of human hearing.

A similar setup could one day float high in the atmosphere of Venus. At the planet’s surface, conditions are infernal: Temperatures are high enough to melt lead, and pressures are so overwhelming that they would crush a submarine. It would be hard for any lander to survive long enough to detect a tremor. But 50 kilometers above the surface, temperatures and pressures are remarkably clement, perfect for a long-lived balloon (aside from a touch of sulfuric acid in the greenhouse atmosphere, which is 96% carbon dioxide). In 1985, the Soviet Union showed it could be done, flying two balloons for 2.5 days in this layer. They only stopped recording data when their batteries ran out.

Five Weeks in a Balloon [wikipedia.org], Venusian style.

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