Earthquake Warnings from Unused Seafloor Cables

(a) Map of detected earthquakes (b) Data used to detect the quakes. Image: Jiuxun Yin et al., GeoScienceWorld (2023)

Researchers at Caltech have used 50 km of existing submarine optical fibre cable between the U.S. and Chile to detect earthquakes. This technique, called Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS), exploits the shifts of tiny flaws in optical fibres as seismic sensors. Over the four days of measurement, they recorded three small on- and off-shore earthquakes with magnitudes near 3. The team found that the offshore DAS can deliver earthquake warnings about three seconds earlier than land-based systems. They believe that they can improve the system by five more seconds. Press release here, paper here.

Neutron Stars Can Crack, New Study Says

This week's episode of Science News covers why coin flips are not fifty-fifty, starquakes, the most powerful solar storm ever, space debris, and more! You can take the quiz here.

Mars Has Tectonic Activity After All

Detection spectrogram of the May 2022 Marsquake, S122a. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ETH Zurich)

Earth has earthquakes, so have you ever wondered if Mars has Marsquakes? It does. But until now, scientists thought that Mars lost its tectonic activity long ago, and the remaining quakes are caused by asteroid impacts. Well, it turns out it might be more complex.Last spring, NASA’s InSight lander detected the largest quake ever recorded on Mars. Scientists initially believed that the 4.7 magnitude quake was the result of an asteroid impact, but an international team headed up at the University of Oxford in the U.K. has now looked for a crater, found nil, and concluded that the Marsquake must have been tectonic in origin after all. They still don’t think Mars has tectonic plates, but rather that it was a stress release in the crust.Press release here, paper here.

Climate Change Downgrades Beer but Improves Wine

Feeling down about climate change? If you’re a beer drinker, you now have one more thing to  worry about. According to a recent Nature paper, climate change downgrades beer. But if you’re a wine-lover, rejoice. According to a recent paper in IScience, its taste is going to benefit.For the wine-study, they used 50 years of wine critic scores and weather data from the Bordeaux region of France. The results suggest that wine grapes thrive in the warmer, shorter, and rainier growing seasons that climate change brings, and that the ongoing climate shifts will likely further improve the taste of wine from the area. On the other hand, fifty years of analysis of hops plants in Europe reveals that under warmer temperatures, the flavour of beer will take a dive.In summary, Wine 1: Beer 0More here. Papers here and here.

In this week’s video, I return to the Many Worlds Interpretation and address some common questions about it, notably whether it’s simpler than Cophenhagen, whether it’s local, and whether it conserves energy. You can take the quiz here.

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