Brood X made itself known in a way that could change how we monitor insect populations.
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Roar of cicadas was so loud, it was picked up by fiber-optic cables
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If waves from a loud bang (say an airplane crossing the sound barrier, or a meteor falling) hit an optic cable more or less diagonally, can you determine the direction from where it came based on the disturbances travelling along the cable? Or is this system only sensitive enough to pick up a signal when it is coiled (as in the picture)?
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Really interesting article - thanks.
Thought it would have picked up a few more comments by now, but looks like it’s been mostly crickets around here…
Thought it would have picked up a few more comments by now, but looks like it’s been mostly crickets around here…
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DeschutesCore
Ars Scholae Palatinae
According to this paper, yes.
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/...ty is highly,by the reference geophone array.
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We had Brood X here. They were loud enough that we could clearly hear them even when we drove on the highway at 75 MPH (120 KPH). Louder than the other cars and semi-truck around us.
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This is fascinating stuff. Over time I assume that aspects like the frequency of the "interogator" laser and the hardware/software used for analysis of the return pulses may be fine-tuned and improved to increase the distance from which signals may be captured, enhance the resolution over different types of fibre, capture complex signals from a straight piece of fibre rather than needing a loop, maybe allow for multiple laser sources at different frequencies to "listen" for signals in specific bands... "listening with light", it's such a Sci-Fi concept, I love it.
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This is very fascinating. You would think that they will also be looking for a way to further refine this so individual spieces could be identified. Might not be attainable, but then we said man would never get to the moon, walk on the moon, this or that will never happen, blahblahblah. Man is very ingenious, they'll at least try.
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Fascinating. Now I'm left wondering whether such a persistent, multi-directional and loud buzz would have an impact on actual data transfer through the fiber?
I'd guess it's minimal, if any, but still funny to think about someone calling their ISP due to bad connectivity and being told "yeah, we know, it's the bugs. Like, literal bugs singing on the cables, nothing we can do about it"...
I'd guess it's minimal, if any, but still funny to think about someone calling their ISP due to bad connectivity and being told "yeah, we know, it's the bugs. Like, literal bugs singing on the cables, nothing we can do about it"...
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during the height of Brood X I went outside on my back porch with a sound meter -- 99 decibels, which is pretty impressive, also painful
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Great , no wonder where AI is getting info from, even the bugs now!
"A field called bioacoustics already uses microphones to listen for species in remote areas, sometimes assisted by AI to parse the data."
"A field called bioacoustics already uses microphones to listen for species in remote areas, sometimes assisted by AI to parse the data."
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Fascinating article.
And Brood X sounds like the name of a video game to be released in a year or two.
And Brood X sounds like the name of a video game to be released in a year or two.
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I’m a member of a 12 step program. Once a week I attend an outdoor meeting at one of the parks in town. Often, at meetings, I struggle with listening to the way some people drone on and on about absolutely nothing, but sometimes the cicadas kick in and drown someone out and for that I’ll always love them.
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Photon_plumber
Ars Tribunus Militum
Just for a split second I was thinking no way, but in the late 1980s, we were building fiber ring gyroscopes that depended upon an outside influence (any dimensional strain) to alter the polarization of the standing wave within the fiber. That change in polarization was proportional to some out physical quantity. They surely would have laughed at this application.
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"“We use them just to transmit the data—zeros and ones—but we can do much more,” says Ozharar. “That’s why fiber sensing will become more and more important, and more widely used, in the near future.”"
Question is what changes will need to be made in this fiber that both preserves it's original function and the additional functionality?
Question is what changes will need to be made in this fiber that both preserves it's original function and the additional functionality?
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One of the ways that we determined the speed at which underwater landslides travel was by looking at the time when the New Foundland landslide (from the 1929 Grand Banks Earthquake) cut each of the transatlantic cables. So, yes - if you have a network of cables, you can determine the speed and velocity of such disturbances.
Right now, we do a similar thing using seismometers (which were mainly installed to look for incoming ICBMs - now don't say that the Cold War never gave you anything!).
FWIW, the oil industry has been using fiber as a combination sensing tool and communications method for about a decade and a half now. So this isn't new, just an interesting use of an existing tool.
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XSportSeeker
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Kinda reminded me of that tech that can get audio from a video feed, by catching micro vibrations on objects. Cool stuff
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Is it just me or did this article arbitrarily decide to call OTDRs "interrogators"? Are they using some novel new device for DAS?
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There are even security applications now, running a fibre all around a perimeter fence and using that as a microphone to detect and localise intruders. Or buried nearby for detecting the same via footsteps.
Which is pretty cool – as the fibre cables I have seen used weren't even that special or specially installed, just basically strung* along the fence – but it's also kinda scary at the same time...
*: no loops like here to increase sensitivity, I guess for that application just a straight fibre was sensitive enough, even if it likely needed some calibration to reduce false positives.
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Remind me of how those fiber optic cables are going to provide service to the ships in the middle of the ocean? And to the big rigs driving down the highways?
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Middle of the ocean is going to require space based telecoms, but a robust fiber network would allow for better terrestrial radio (cellular) service along highways. If we could build the highway, we should be able to plop some cell towers along it as well. Anywhere that we've managed to connect to the electrical grid could have fiber as well if we could be assed. We did it with POTS.
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We live in the midst of where Brood X came up in Maryland. We measured 83db outside during the height of the 6 or so weeks it was going on! Made it basically impossible to be outside (at least enjoyably), though it was cool to experience. Not surprised it could be picked up by this gizmo.
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The same way they both get telecoms right now, and have for decades. But better, because when you have a good fiber network you can build more radio towers and give them more bandwidth.
Mid-ocean ships will probably always need some kind of space-based communications if they want significant bandwidth, but that demonstrably does not require tens of thousands of LEO satellites.
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Fun fact: A cell tower costs about $175k to build. A starlink satellite probably costs about $250k to build, and optimistically costs $500k-ish to launch. A cell tower can also be repaired and upgraded in place, and the majority of the physical resources go into the structure, which has a useful life measured in decades, while a starlink satellite has a planned lifespan of five fucking years.
Even if Elon Musk's grandest launch-cost fever dreams come remotely true (you know, like the Cybertruck) and the starlink satellites somehow become "only" $500k each from start to orbit, at the final planned constellation of 12,000 satellites that's $1.2 billion a year in just basic constellation maintenance alone. And the actual plan is to just maintain that level of spending forever.
I'm just saying that would bury a lot of damn fiber, and build a lot of damn radio towers right here on the ground, working toward an end result where we eventually are kinda done, and can just do maintenance instead of completely rebuilding the backbone of the entire global telecommunications network every five fucking years.
Even if Elon Musk's grandest launch-cost fever dreams come remotely true (you know, like the Cybertruck) and the starlink satellites somehow become "only" $500k each from start to orbit, at the final planned constellation of 12,000 satellites that's $1.2 billion a year in just basic constellation maintenance alone. And the actual plan is to just maintain that level of spending forever.
I'm just saying that would bury a lot of damn fiber, and build a lot of damn radio towers right here on the ground, working toward an end result where we eventually are kinda done, and can just do maintenance instead of completely rebuilding the backbone of the entire global telecommunications network every five fucking years.
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I'm wondering just /how/ sensitive such a system can be made to be. The concept is suggestive of much more clandestine and perhaps even nefarious applications.
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I think that is a fair point for various reasonably populated land area. Now in the middle of the Seas, there is an added value to sat internet.
And there would be value in being able to go fish broken satellites for repair or decommissioning too.
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If they have a straight section of fiber, and if they know the speed of sound through the air, and the speed through the fiber, they can work out the angle from the fiber, but not the direction. They would know it came from somewhere in a cone whose axis is aligned with the fiber. If they don't know whether the source is from the air, like a plane, or from underground, like an earthquake, they would have two different cones due to different speed-of-sound, one possible in the ground and one possible in the air.
If the fiber takes a turn and has another straight section, they would have two cones, and the direction would be limited to where those two cones intersected. Or, again, one where the ground cones intersected and one where the air cones intersected. Maybe they have other information that would let them figure out which direction is correct, or most likely. For example, a ground source might have both an S-wave and a P-wave (which have different speeds) that are or should be detectable.
To additionally figure out distance, they would need some fiber far enough away from the rest that the difference in direction would let them figure that part out.
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Let's put it this way - they use fiber optics in LIGO, which is one of the most sensitive instruments in science.
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Can glass in a trench in Colorado look at weather patterns in Siberia?
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I had to look up DAS to discover that it senses strain (change in length) of the fibre between successive laser pulse. It would have been nice for Wired to include this instead of the hand-wavy "tiny perturbations in that light caused by seismic activity"
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Ugh, I have a bug phobia and that pic TRIGGERED me, lol. Especially the periodic cicadas (like in the pic above) I have a couple big trees and just opening the door to my house during one of the big broods is an anxiety causing event (I can literally have about half a dozen fall on me). My house has HUNDREDS of them attached to it.
EDIT: And yes the sound, its actually quite deafening at the peek of there emergence.
EDIT2: it was really fun when we had a 2 brood emergence (a 13 and 17 year) come out at the same year. (2005ish?)
EDIT: And yes the sound, its actually quite deafening at the peek of there emergence.
EDIT2: it was really fun when we had a 2 brood emergence (a 13 and 17 year) come out at the same year. (2005ish?)
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All that is true. However, I think you are misusing ”we” in your comment. That fiber and those cell towers are not put in by “we” - they are put in by private companies that decide for themselves whether they want to or not. In my neighborhood (in a 150k pop suburban city) they’ve decided not to run fiber - apparently too much money to backfill for the expected ROI - so I pay $50/month for 45/5 Mb service, which is the best available. (Other neighborhoods in the area did get fiber - I guess they were deemed to offer a better ROI.) They are a decent number of cell towers nearby, but several have radio problems, so about half the time, you get a solid connection but unintelligible voice, and again, they’ve decided not to do anything about it, since there’s “adequate coverage”, so they are investing in expansion elsewhere. It’s much worse in moderately to very rural areas - lack of ROI possibilities means even less service offered.
LEO constellations may not be the most cost effective mechanism, but private companies are willing to invest the money to build them, while in most areas, the incumbent companies aren’t willing to invest in improved ground-based service. So since they are paying for it, they get to decide the type of service they are going to offer. Now if all this was a nationalized service, it might be different - but it’s not.
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Does it take 12,000 satellites replaced every five years to look at weather patterns?
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