A computer gets bored, a (perhaps) discerned seism
By Denis Delbecq • October 29th, 2008 in 22:49 · Category: Actuality
Your computer turns thumbs. It occupy it to dispel seisms is the message thrown by a group of academics gathered within Quake-Catcher Network (CCN), network of the attrapeurs of seisms PC or Mac, everybody can participate in it provided that his computer is equipped with an accéléromètre.
Since the boom of the Internet in the middle of the years ninety, the scientific laboratories out of repair of means try to recruit the power of calculation of the internauts. For example to decipher signals picked up by the radio telescope of Arecibo (Porto-Rico) and to try to spot signals there organised in the space electromagnetic noise, which would sign the existence of clever life outside the earth (Seti@Home). Other programmes, as Folding@Home, belong person concerned in biology. Others, in the secret cassage of codes and in the modelling of climate. Principle is every time the same: the internaut downloads a small programme on the site of plan and his computer is put in contribution in network of calculate distributed.
This time, the hunters of seisms will not be taken in your unused power of calculation. They lorgent first of all on the accéléromètre, a device which equips a number growing by laptop computers, or that is sometimes added in form of key USB. This small flea is intended in general to discern a fall of the computer and to line up the read heads of the discs of stocking before impact. But she gives, according to CCN, possibility of discerning rather intense seisms, on the condition of not being too much far. The internauts can, if they accept it, to give their position GPS.
This limitation on performances of sensors makes them not very useful in lands as France. In the hexagon, if seisms are relatively frequent, they are of very weak intensity. On the other hand, on the West coast of the United States, QCN could discern a seism of magnitude 3,8 happened near Los Angeles on July 29th of this year, retort of a seism of magnitude 5,4. Because to avoid that a computer merges a fall and a seism, the researchers have a parade: a seism, it is an event recorded at the same time on several computers. And a fall, it is the single internaut who, called, will not have more than the eyes to cry …
Picture: © DR
Article read 3,692 times. Tags:catastrophes natural, detection, seisme
Comments in 
It is therefore necessary to know what is made by installing this type of software.
Thank you for thinking of it.
Sanctimonious