Exploding Munitions Caught On Seismometer (arstechnica.com) 20
An anonymous reader writes: Seismometers have been deployed throughout the world. Scientists need a big web of them to gather data about earthquakes, and the network has expanded widely over the past 60 years. As it turns out, seismometers are pretty good at picking up vibrations from things that aren't earthquakes. A team of researchers scouring logs from 2006 were able to find clear evidence of the explosion of a munitions depot in Iraq. And that's not all: "The team, led by Ghassan Aleqabi of Washington University in St. Louis, carefully analyzed each wiggle on the seismograph and discovered it could identify a number of different things. The firing of a mortar, for example, was identifiable along with the explosion when the shell landed. Car bomb explosions also stood out, although the bouncing of the shockwave off surrounding buildings made each one a bit different. The team could even identify signals from drones and helicopters and figure out if they were approaching or moving away based on the Doppler shift."
Hooolllleeee sheeeeeeet! (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh my god stop the presses! Thing that can detect shockwaves... detected shockwaves! Hooolllleeee sheeeeeeet!
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With much more precision than most people would expect, to the extent that there are possibly applications in, for example, automatic response to ambushes before anyone radios in for help.
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No, the ammo dump was 7 kilometers away. Dare I suggest opening the window someone could discern the different explosion types too, and maybe even listen for helicopters?
ending 2015 with a stupid article, as expected of slashdot
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I'm inclined to agree. This is much more interesting than folks here seem to think. Maybe it's just me but I love tech news and this certainly qualifies. Anyone who claims that they expected or knew this, prior to this article, is full of shit or better have their names on this paper or some other article that predates this. I am, by no means, even remotely an expert but I've watched a shitton of documentaries over the years - many had segments on detecting things with a seismometer, and nothing indicated t
Drones/ Helicopters ? (Score:1)
It sound bull to me. If this was true, also all passenger planes, etc.
That's how the US found Kim Dotcom (Score:5, Funny)
He got out of bed and the seismographs had him pinpointed.
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No that's gravimetry.
BS on the 'drone detection', etc ... (Score:2)
... that would be a signal so small it would be in the noise, along with animal and human footsteps, vehicle and air traffic, and the wind.
The ultimate in surveillance (Score:1)
Turning the entire world into a microphone!
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Interestingly enough, I'm vaguely familiar with the project you mention and the two aren't really dissimilar but they're not exactly the same either. Those were, as far as I know, much closer to the source and were a bit more fine tuned than the seismometers that this is referencing.
That said, an interesting aside - and continuation, the devices that you placed were not always placed by hand. Some were dropped along the sides of the trails by airplane and helicopters. The Viet Minh knew about some of them a
There are already groups doing this (Score:1)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Technical_Applications_Center knows how to get a LOT of data out of seismometer ...