“Seismic listening posts are sparse on the vast, remote ocean floor. Their scarcity means researchers often can’t detect the first shakings of tsunami-causing earthquakes or the seismic waves that penetrate Earth’s deep interior like x-rays, carrying information that illuminates structures in the mantle and core. But the abyss is home to another kind of technology: the fiber-optic cables that shuttle internet data around the world.

In recent years, researchers have sought to use those cables to supplement ocean-bottom seismometers by watching for shifts in the light coursing through the fibers. Now, a team led by researchers at Nokia Bell Labs has advanced that technique to its ultimate realization, turning a 4400-kilometer telecom cable linking Hawaii to California into the equivalent of 44,000 seismic stations, spaced 100 meters apart.

The breakthrough, presented today at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, has the potential to usher in a new age of imaging the planet’s interior and monitoring the sea floor and the ocean above it.”

From Science.