Quake-Catching's Best Weapon Could Be Your Home Laptop
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]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
jackculled said 11:26PM on 3-15-2010
OMG - please develop this software at once, so we can prevent those catastrophic events like the ones we've seen on Chile and Haiti. Opinions: http://bit.ly/chile-earthquake-devastated-opinions
I have a feeling the next one will be far more sinister...
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paperless said 5:06PM on 3-16-2010
This isn't exactly reliable at least when it comes to laptops because if I move my laptop from one place to another the sensor goes crazy (naturally).
But still... It's great nonetheless and I guess that's the main reason why they need a lot of samples.
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