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FM radio wave-based early earthquake detection (2021)
- hilbert42 3y agoFor years I've suggested radio amateurs set networks up to investigate this. The advantage of this is that there are many of them and they are spread over a diverse area. The strength of carriers on certain bands could be monitored like a sort of mesh network and changes in signal strength etc. that would likely be the signature of a pending earthquake could be quickly identified.
- talldatethrow 3y agoThat would make me feel great about being a ham nerd and actually doing something useful instead of just listening to old men talk. I kid I kid, I love ham radio. Great fun for camping/off-road trips trying out all the local repeaters of that area. Plus a nice safety backup factor.
- donor20 3y agoThe iPhones sat capabilities from AAA to emergency rescue have diminished some of the emergency benefits and inReach some others so something like this would be great.
- amatecha 3y agoThere's one huge upside to amateur radio that surpasses all other alernatives: a transceiver potentially works "forever" (barring normal electronics failure) and requires zero infrastructure. The transceiver I use on a regular basis to communicate worldwide, for free (literally - it's powered by solar-recharged battery), is from like 2005. It has no reliance on the continued functioning of modern society, the electrical grid, commercial entities, political stability, orbiting satellites, continued monthly/annual subscription payments, etc. :)
- jamesdwilson 3y agoPlease tell us more about your rig
- talldatethrow 3y agoI'm not OP, but I assume it's a 12v car battery, with a 12v solar panel, and a 12v automotive ham radio connected to the battery, in a box. Edit: the solar panel is on top of the box. /s
- amatecha 3y agoSure! Yaesu FT-857D[0] in Armoloq TPA-857B pack frame[1], High Ground Gear PRC-117G bag[2], Dakota Lithium 12v 10ah LiFePo4 battery[3] (in its own little pouch on the back of the PRC-117G), integrated Digirig[4] and CW key extension cable attached to the pack frame. Charging is via Genasun GV-10-Li-14.2V[5] and a big solar panel I got on discount a year or so ago. I've also got a universal adapter so I can charge various devices like my laptop or whatever else "on the go". One improvement for longer-term operation would of course be larger battery and solar panel. Either way, basically a "shack in a bag". Total weight for the pack (excluding solar charge controller and panel) is 11lbs. Deploy and attach an antenna and you're on the air. Oh, I should mention I got the overall idea from KT1RUN "The Tech Prepper" who has a video[6] showcasing the setup, if you're interested. [0] https://www.yaesu.com/indexVS.cfm?cmd=DisplayProducts&encProdID=8CBB7C4BDBAF40129AD4253A4987523C https://www.yaesu.com/indexVS.cfm?cmd=DisplayProducts&encPro... [1] https://www.armoloq.com/tpa-857b https://www.armoloq.com/tpa-857b [2] https://highgroundgear.com/products/instant-access-prc-117g-golf-radio-pouch https://highgroundgear.com/products/instant-access-prc-117g-... [3] https://dakotalithium.com/product/dakota-lithium-12v-10ah-battery/ https://dakotalithium.com/product/dakota-lithium-12v-10ah-ba... [4] https://digirig.net/ https://digirig.net/ [5] https://sunforgellc.com/product/gv-10/ https://sunforgellc.com/product/gv-10/ [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QHVq3P_xWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QHVq3P_xWI
- jamesdwilson 3y agothank you so much! I will dig into this!
- talldatethrow 3y agoFor true life and death emergency Im sure the others are great, but for a "my serpentine belt just broke on my 2004 4Runner, could someone deliver one to road #3223, 4 miles down in death valley" I think you'd do better with HAM radio. AAA isn't going to come help you for less than $500+ (actually probably $1000) somewhere in death valley. The community around something like ham radio, although technically not even a community, makes me think I'd get neighborly type help much easier, even if it took someone's entire afternoon to help.
- op00to 3y agoI would never rely on another Amateur Radio operator for help unless there was no other option.
- talldatethrow 3y agoWhat other option is there in death valley, miles up a random road? Your only options are asking someone else driving by (happens 2-3x a day on some roads), asking ham radio and seeing if anyone in a repeater radius is feeling helpful, or limping to a main road slowly. Obviously circumstances vary. When I was in death valley for 9 days, I had enough supplies to sit for 14. So if I needed help on day 2, I can give a helpful sincere ham radio operator a chance to help. If another car passed me in that time frame, I'd talk with them and setup some kind of 'hey, check on me on your way back' system if they were returning this way. And so on. If I had a breakdown with 36 hours of water remaining, I'd treat things pretty differently and possibly be using ham to get them to relay emergency info.. since technically that's my only choice.. I own an android without sat service and don't any satellite product. I personally think you can trust ham radio for a favor pretty well. And for an emergency even more so.
- op00to 3y agoI would buy an emergency beacon if I were to be outside of cell range in a risky situation.
- hilbert42 3y ago
- hilbert42 3y agoPerhaps you could pass the idea by your local group, ARRL, RSGB etc. I failed to generate interest, you may be more successful. See my reply to amatecha.
- amatecha 3y agoThere is something along those lines, but accessible to anyone: Raspberry Shake[0]. I follow a ton of amateurs on mastodon and occasionally notice them posting their screenshots of detected seismic activity as such events occur. Pretty cool! It uses seismic and infrasound sensors rather than RF, though -- pretty different from what the HN story is discussing. [0] https://raspberryshake.org/ https://raspberryshake.org/
- hilbert42 3y agoRight, that, no doubt, is an excellent idea but it's somewhat uncertain how useful it would be to forewarn people before an earthquake began as often there doesn't seem to be any significant forewarning shakes. Whenever there's a major quake tragedy there never seems to be sufficient warning. I got the idea that amateur radio could be useful with monitoring the changes to RF transmissions several decades ago after I read a paper that transmissions in the ELF band (3 - 30kHz) were affected by the stresses built up in the earth before an earthquake commenced. These EM effects are thought to be caused by stresses in heavy rock such as granite which generate a piezoelectric-like field and or that distortions of the earth's magnetic field occur around areas under stress. The ELF band is suggested because it's extremely stable with almost no effects from the ionosphere, thus changes to any RF carrier in this band would be due to fields generated by quakes (and the signal generated by stress buildup wouldn't be lost in the ionospheric noise as it is with higher frequency bands). My reasoning went thus: amateurs are spread widely across the globe and if they set up a mesh network of ELF transmissions amateur stations could then monitor the mesh transmissions for changes in signal strength, etc. This would be done automatically 24/7. Any deviation would set off a trigger, and given the mesh nature of the network, the location where the path distortion occurred could then be triangulated. It's also my understanding that the EM effects caused by stressed rock can occur days or perhaps weeks before a quake, thus it could be an effective early warning system. It seemed to me that geological services such as the USGS have probably thought along these lines but haven't done much further research because it would be necessary to set up thousands of monitoring stations across the globe and given that the science is still inconclusive and not fully settled then funding would likely not be forthcoming. That could be solved if amateurs became involved as their stations are already established. I envisioned amateurs forming a sort of loose partnership between geological services such as the USGS for the purpose (many countries have such a service). Even before any monitoring service was established, radio amateurs could be involved in the research, Establishing experimental tests etc. would be comparatively straightforward given their network of stations. I passed the ideas by the local amateur group, VK2, where I am on several occasions, the last time was after the 9.1 magnitude quake/tsunami in Sumatra Indonesia on Boxing Day in 2004 but I got little interest which left me somewhat disappointed. Incidentally, I used to have an amateur license so that's what gave me the idea to link amateurs with geological services. I still reckon it's a good idea, even if the research is inconclusive (at least there's little doubt that earthquakes do actually cause electromagnetic effects—witness this story (and there are many more such instances), Thus if EM effects exist then it seems logical to me that we ought to be able to detect them as we do with other EM phenomena).
- CommitSyn 3y agoNoob question. Any properties of FM at a high or strange combination that could cause lights in the lab? If so, could they be elaborated on to help explain the Hessdalen lights phenomena? Can radio waves of any combination/form/output/etc generate anything close to plasma? or non-plasma lights? My thinking is along the (fault) lines of earthquake lights, maybe not related to the Hessdalen lights. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessdalen_lights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessdalen_lights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light Some videos of the Hessdalen lights: https://old.hessdalen.org/pict/2022/2022_04_18_00_21_45_hess.mp4 https://old.hessdalen.org/pict/2022/2022_04_18_00_21_45_hess... https://old.hessdalen.org/pict/2023/2023_01_01_19_50_00_hess.mp4 https://old.hessdalen.org/pict/2023/2023_01_01_19_50_00_hess... https://old.hessdalen.org/pict/2023/2023_01_02_18_30_27_hess.mp4 https://old.hessdalen.org/pict/2023/2023_01_02_18_30_27_hess...
- JPLeRouzic 3y agoI am not an expert in this field but what is described in the article is anomalous (long distance) FM transmissions. I guess they used FM because existing FM diffusion had mandated the creation of lot of FM emitters (one every 70 miles/100 km) so it enables to cover a wide area.
- hilbert42 3y agoNo doubt FM stations could be used but the TX radius is only about 100 miles. I might be wrong but I doubt this would be enough to triangulate the point of EM interference and in many places there would not be enough transmitters. Anomalous long range FM transmissions would be possible if the atmosphere was ionized (like sporadic E-layer transmissions) but it's a moot point whether the EM effects of that type are sufficiently regular in an already unpredictable earthquake environment. It's possible the low frequency approach may be more consistently sensitive, that is it may still work when there was no ionization necessary for the anomalous FM transmissions. Of coarse, that's only speculation on my part. Again, this needs further scientific investigation, and again amateurs could be helpful. The FM band is 88-108MHz but the amateur bands of 50-54MHz (6m) and 144-148MHz (2m) could be used as a feasibility study (the characteristics of those bands ought to be close enough to evaluate the idea).
- Johnythree 3y agoThis has been discussed a couple of times here: There seems to be little point in using Ham transmitters when there are a large number of very powerful Military transmitters already operating in the VLF band. Plus the monitors wouldn't need to be hams, just normal Shortwave listeners and/or hobbyists.. And as discussed previously, there already are extensive networks which use signals from military VLF transmitters to monitor for "Sudden Ionospheric Disturbances" (SID) see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_ionospheric_disturbance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_ionospheric_disturbance. You don't specify how your network would work, but it sounds like it would be very similar to the professional SID studies being carried out by various universities world wide.
- hilbert42 3y ago"...when there are a large number of very powerful Military transmitters already operating in the VLF band." To my knowledge, no military TXes are being used for that purpose. I did outline how the system might work, that is similar to the structure of cellular phones. Moreover, there's no indication there's enough military TXes around to allow for accurate triangulation, nor is there any indication or guarantee that the military will have them running 24/7, which is a prerequisite. SID is all very well and to be welcomed but someone or entity has to run the service after the science (via, say, SID) has been established. Any entity running such a scheme has to work across national boundaries—has to be international. Chances of that happening anytime soon other than through AR are just fanciful. AR has a long history in civil defense and emergencies and has international representation through the IARU https://www.iaru.org/ https://www.iaru.org/ which has been around just on a century and has representation at the ITU in Geneva. It's in a pivotal position to argue the case internationally. If you've a better, more practical solution then let's hear about it.
- dclowd9901 3y agoOne of my favorite things that’s happens is when you read a sentence like “FM Radio based early earthquake detection”, immediately understand how that could work, and then wonder why you never thought of it. It feels like the real genesis of novel ideas is putting two things together that don’t seem like they go together but thinking about how they _could_.
- loxias 3y agoI'll bite. Immediately understand how that could work? I don't see it -- what's the connection? Earthquakes happen when stress on a tectonic plate border exceeds (I think?) the static friction that was holding it in place. What's the leap from "pent up physical stress approaching a breaking point" to "has a measurable impact/effect on frequency modulation"?
- H8crilA 3y agoDon't they need an extremely accurate clock though? GPSDO or even a small atomic clock. The phase/frequency differences must be tiny.
- metaphor 3y agoMaybe I'm just exhausted, but the abstract[1] alone was quite painful to parse. Was this paper auto-translated? [1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9441281 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9441281
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- loxias 3y agoIt triggered my "crackpot warning light", but maybe it's just poor translation. Unfortunately, not on sci-hub (yet).
- szszrk 3y agoI found this article[1] much easier to understand, it was linked as related to OP's article. [1] https://academic.oup.com/gji/article/180/2/858/690652?login=false https://academic.oup.com/gji/article/180/2/858/690652?login=...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- EdwardDiego 3y agoI'm not a scientist, and as such, not very good at parsing papers, but how many of these anomalies have been detected, then no earthquake occurred?
- psKama 3y agoIt says: "The echoes appear once to several times per day, from several weeks to a few days before the earthquake occurrence and do not appear on other time."
- EdwardDiego 3y agoBut have they been looking for them at other times though?
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- glumreaper 3y agoThere's an important difference between prediction and detection. If you're in a nontrivial earthquake, detection isn't helpful: You already know it's happening. The challenge is prediction. There are a couple of startups that appear to be operating in this area with similar(ish) concepts to those described in the link. precursor-spc.com - space based monitoring of atmospheric conditions, providing space weather forecasts and, apparently, earthquake prediction. Ionoterra - ground based monitoring of the ionosphere I'm skeptical. If these companies were truly on to something then they would be selling their services to all the governments and would be household names.
- bobthepanda 3y agoDetection is not helpful for those at the epicenter but buys seconds for those farther away, which can significantly reduce loss of life. As a example, the detection system in Japan is linked to the Shinkansen control system, and trains will start emergency braking immediately. It reduces speed enough that there have been no earthquake fatalities resulting from Shinkansen derailments.
- chakintosh 3y agoThe recent earthquake in Morocco traveled all the way to Portugal from the epicenter. I was fortunate to drive through the epicenter area earlier that day because the plan was to stay in a lodge not far from the epicenter, but my kid was acting all fussy in the backseat so I drove straight to Casablanca. And that night, when the earthquake hit us, it felt like the whole house was sitting on top of a fright train, everything was shaking violently and I could have used an early warning to get my child and wife outside in time because had the earthquake been any stronger, I don't think anyone in my building would have had time to evacuate. When you see the timestamp on the CCTV cameras, you could see that close to the epicenter, the earthquake hit around 23:11 in Marrakech, and in Casablanca, it reached us at around 23:13, I think a 2 minutes headsup is enough time for people get up and haul it outside.