MILITARY history is hidden in the squiggles of a seismogram. During the Iraq war, earthquake-monitoring instruments at Baghdad鈥檚 seismic observatory also recorded wartime activity including car bombs, weapon rounds and improvised explosives.
Michael Wysession at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, and his colleagues looked at the data for traces of a big event on 10 October 2006, when rounds fired into an ammunition supply point set off a chain of explosions.
They detected not just this 鈥渃ook-off鈥�, but also evidence of other nearby reported military activity. There were unique seismic signatures for each type of weapon. And vibrations from heavy air traffic were clear enough that they could discern the type and speed of helicopters flying past (Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, ).
Advertisement
Such detectors could be used to gather military intelligence, says Stephen Arrowsmith at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. 鈥淚t could be useful as a tool to characterise what鈥檚 going on in this type of environment.鈥�
(Image: 漏 Baz Ratner / Reuters)
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淪eismic tools discern quakes of war鈥�