(Riya Saha, Intern Journalist)NEW DELHI: Google claims it has developed a way to use subsea fiber optic cables to detect earthquakes and tsunamis. While such systems already exist, the company claims its technique uses existing fiber optic cables and works “over tens of thousands of kilometers” as opposed to the “up to 100 km” limit that current sensing techniques have. The company is using the same cables that are instrumental in sharing, searching, sending, and receiving information around the world.
“Our technique relies on equipment that is present on the vast majority of the world’s existing fiber optic systems, so it is broadly applicable,” the company said in a blog post. “Fiber optic cables connect far-flung continents along the ocean floor, and much of the Internet’s international traffic travels over these cables,” the post adds.
Fiber optic cables carry data in the form of light, which is what makes them incredibly fast and averse to certain challenges copper wires suffer from, like the weather. “One of the properties of light that are tracked as part of the optical transmission is the state of polarization (SOP). The SOP changes in response to mechanical disturbances along the cable and tracking these disturbances enables us to detect seismic activity,” the company explained in the post.
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