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Quake-Catching's Best Weapon Could Be Your Home Laptop

by Terrence O'Brien on March 15, 2010 at 10:40 AM

Quaking-Catching Laptop Network Growing Dramatically

In August of 2008, we covered a program called Quake-Catcher that turned laptop and desktop PCs (with a $50 USB sensor) into powerful data collecting tools for seismologists. Protecting the hard drive with an accelerometer (which is built into many a modern computer), Quake-Catcher is able to gather information about the size, speed, and strength of earthquakes.

At the time of its inception, the network of computers was very small, with only three machines monitoring shaking. In order to be effective, the program needs many PCs working in concert to discern the "dramatic shaking" of seismic activity from the vibrations of traffic or bumps. Quake-Catcher is finally nearing that critical mass with over 1,000 computers running the software across the globe, including over 450 in California alone.

The program has even popped up in remote areas such as Antarctica, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan -- places where it would be extremely difficult to install traditional seismometers (as they need to be buried along fault lines). If you want to join the network and do your part to aid in the study of earthquakes, head to qcn.stanford.edu and download the software. [From: LA Times, Via: PopSci]

Tags: accelerometer, earthquake, laptop, quake-catcher network, Quake-catcherNetwork, science, top

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