How old undersea cables could reshape earthquake preparedness

A new study has found a way to use old telecom cables lying under the sea as earthquake sensors, which could save precious seconds in warning people of impending tremors. The researchers used a method called Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) to turn 31 miles (50 kilometers) of fiber optic cable between the US and Chile into thousands of seismic detectors.

The study, published in The Seismic Record, was led by Jiuxun Yin, a former Caltech researcher who now works at SLB. He and his colleagues analyzed the seismic data from 8,960 channels along the cable for four days and detected three…