For 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.
There 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.
Raspberry shake is ok for seeing if there was a quake, but there are in fact several improvements I've wanted to make if I had the time.
Starting with adding a long range wireless or cellular connection so it can be away from human activity, also I've wanted to improve the timestamp accuracy to well beyond +-10ms and I'm pretty sure it can be done with a tcxo and a GPS receiver.
I also think an actual raspberry pi isn't strictly needed and so the power consumption can be reduced a bit by sticking to microcontrollers
Raspberry Shake is great. Back in 2019 USGS conducted test comparison between Raspberry Shake 4D sensors and more costly seismic sensors, and the results are comparable but nor as good [1]. We need more places with seismic sensors to provide more comprehensive data on earthquake and other seismic events. The more sensors we have, the better chance we have monitoring the events, i.e big data seismology [2].
At the moment we have good results for predicting earthquakes (not forecasting) that should be able to warn the residents a few days before the impending major earthquake. Surprisingly, the results are consistent based on offline seismic sensors data of the recent Turkeys, New Zealand, Indonesia and Philippines earthquakes. Hopefully we can reliably repeat the early detection capability with the real-time data, if fundings are available. If anyone know how to approach Japan government (or Turkish, NZ, etc) for funding the system please let me know in the comments.
[1]Do low-cost seismographs perform well enough for your network? An overview of laboratory tests and field observations of the OSOP Raspberry Shake 4D:
Turkey: Not my field but I would approach serious academics first. I know Cenk Yaltirak has a hacker mindset and working on a project to create a sensor network for Istanbul. Prof. Naci Gorur may also help, he's retired but dedicated himself to this issue. ITU Geology, and Kandilli are the two main institutions genuinely working on the expected Istanbul earthquake:
Thanks for the leads to potential collaborators in Turkey.
I've been to ITU once before around ten years ago but not to the Geology Engineering department. If I remember correctly, at the time they're building a new HPC cluster mainly for earthquake forecasting and prediction. Will try to contact them, perhaps next time I go to Istanbul I can pay them and Boğaziçi Kandilli Institute a visit.
Also if there's person or company outside academia interested on the research it'll be good because Tübitak has funding for international research and innovation. Perhaps we can have joint industry and academia collaboration to built real-time monitoring systems for testing the new earthquake prediction scheme.
As per my first post, if you could convince radio amateurs, especially their emergency organizations/sections, to be interested then they might be able to apply leverage through their international organization the IARU which has longstanding representation with the ITU: https://www.iaru.org/.
Right, 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).
> given that the science is still inconclusive and not fully settled then funding would likely not be forthcoming
Wouldn’t the first step be to settle the science then?
Why would you need a big network to do that instead of just a dedicated experimental site in earthquake prone area? Wouldn’t that be enough to prove if there is a signal?
My understanding is that ELF transmitters are kind of a big deal and require a lot of money to run. Am I wrong on that? Or you are planning to monitor naturally occuring ELF signals?
"Wouldn’t the first step be to settle the science then?"
That was actually my suggestion.
The amateur radio service is defined as an experimental service so by its nature it involves all radio amateurs if they're interested—they'd pay for any equipment that was needed, not the government.
Earthquakes are unpredictable and it'd be very difficult to guarantee there would be enough AR stations equipped with monitoring equipment sufficient to accurately triangulate the location of the electromagnetic disturbance. It's a voluntary service so to be effective you'd involve as many as possible (and do so everywhere).
The fact that the science is still unresolved is partially because there isn't enough scientific monitoring equipment in the right place at the right time. The whole purpose of my proposal was to try and overcome that limitation.
ELF transmissions are a big deal when one is trying to communicate with submarines where the seawater adds hugely to the path-loss. Any such monitoring service would likely only use several Hz bandwidth so one should be able achieve a reasonable signal-to-noise ratio with limited power (like Voyager does now to communicate with earth).
BTW, there's already an amateur band a 2200 metres (135.7 - 137.8 kHz). which is well below the AM broadcast band. Whether it's low enough in frequency needs investigation. In fact, it would be necessary to select the 'ideal' band before any service could commence (that would be part of the scientific investigation).
How long before a quake do you think something theoretically measurable occurs, and what might that thing be? Unlike the EM effects on the time scale you describe which we might readily figure out how to monitor, for my question I'm not limiting the scope of answers to just those things that are potentially practical to detect with current technology! Any physical change is fair game as a response. For example, maybe an answer is the likes of "X phenomenon probably has an inflection point exactly halfway between each quake, so potentially years of advanced notice if only we had a way to detect it" or some such.
I don't know, I'm not a geologist, vulcanologist nor any type of earth scientist.
Moreover, I reckon it'd be impossible to generalize as every instance would be different. The only thing one could say in the absence of data would be that EM effects would build up over time to a tipping point and then quickky release like a sawtooth waveform but if you want more accurate info then ask the experts.
The point I was making was that because of stresses on rock forces build up and produce EM waves before the tipping point occurs. It's detecting the build-up before its release that has the potential to save people.
I've lost track of those original papers that influenced me. If anyone comes across them I'd like the references.
Maybe the amateurs didn’t see what was in it for them. Perhaps if it was the geological services approaching them about it, they’d sign up for the glamour.
VK is the amateur callsign prefix for Australia, 2 is for the state of New South Wales, 3 for Victoria and so on. So the callsign of any radio amateur whose station (QTH) is located in NSW would begin with VK2.
Australia covers an enormous area almost the size of the US or Europe and even the state of NSW is huge so seismic activity varies widely from place to place. Generally though Australia is very lucky in that its seismic activity is very low—unlike New Zealand which is the next landmass in the Pacific which is very high.
In recent years the only significant earthquake in NSW was in the coastal city of Newcastle in 1989 and over a dozen people were killed. When I was a kid decades ago I lived in the Blue Mountains of NSW which is about 120 miles from Newcastle and I experiencd an earthquake and I thought the house would collapse but luckily it did not (I was in bed and when it started I had difficulty walking across my bedroom the floor shook so much). It's the earthquake in the list in the link below marked 'Robertson and Bowral' with a magnitude of 5.5.
The 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.
There'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. :)
Sure! 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.
For 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.
What 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.
If all emergency services were working neither would I do so (I say that as someone who used to own an AR callsign for some decades).
Trouble is that in big natural disasters most infrastructure is down and frankly even if you find an AR operator he/she's likely without power so won't be much help. Nevertheless, there are many historical instances where AR has been of considerable help in emergencies. In those instances functioning stations, which are often on the periphery of disasters act as relay stations and conduits to official help.
Noob 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.
As I said in my reply to amatecha the existence of EM phenomena caused by earthquakes is well established but that relationship isn't yet well quantified—we can't turn the effect on to just suit our testing. That's the advantage of amateurs monitoring 24/7. We'd eventually catch it this way I reckon.
I 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.
No 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).
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)
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.
"...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/ 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.
There'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.
Detection 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.
The 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.
It 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."
One 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_.
I'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"?
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.