When you think of a science lab, you probably picture a room with beakers and researchers in white coats. The lab for SMU research scientists Dr. Jyoti Sharma and Dr. Stephen Arrowsmith is less formal. It's beneath the picturesque SMU campus, underground.
"So we're currently in a tunnel underneath one of the buildings at SMU," Arrowsmith said. "So this is basically a bundle of communication fibers that go all around campus."
Arrowsmith and Sharma are using unused telecommunications fibers, called 'dark fiber,' to detect and measure earthquakes. This technique is called "Distributed Acoustic Sensing."
"It's a fundamentally new way of measuring seismic events," Arrowsmith said. "It's a very new technology."
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Above ground, Arrowsmith taps on a metal manhole cover while Sharma looks at a computer readout as they pinpoint where along the fiber there is movement. This is not limited to earthquakes.
"We measure football games," Arrowsmith said, pointing out Sharma's recorded movement during an SMU touchdown last year.
For Sharma, studying earthquakes isn't just science. It's personal. She grew up in India and witnessed the destruction a major quake can do.
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"Lots of people have lost their lives," Sharma said. "So it's very painful for me."
Sharma knows firsthand the need for early warning, but getting traditional seismometer sensors into remote areas can be difficult. That's where using 'dark fiber' could help.
"We can't predict earthquakes, but if we can understand the physics of earthquakes better, then that's useful information for society," Arrowsmith said. "It's giving people time to get outside or duck under something."
Arrowsmith and Sharma said their research could help scientists detect smaller earthquakes to better understand the processes that drive bigger earthquakes.
