Fiber Optics Help Scientists Take the Pulse of Our Planet
28.12.22 | Cuca Margoux
It’s like radar, but with light. Distributed acoustic sensing — DAS — picks up tremors from volcanoes, quaking ice, and deep-sea faults, as well as traffic rumbles and whale calls.
Andreas Fichtner strips a cable of its protective sheath, exposing a glass core thinner than a hair — a fragile, 4-kilometer-long fiber that’s about to be fused to another. It’s a fiddly task better suited to a lab, but Fichtner and his colleague Sara Klaasen are doing it atop a windy, frigid ice sheet.
learn more: astronomy.com