Geologists are using fiber optics to monitor earthquakes, volcanoes, and traffic noise.
By Carolyn Wilke
This article was originally published in Knowable Magazine.
Andreas Fichtner strips a cable of its protective sheath, exposing a glass core thinner than a hair—a fragile, four-kilometer-long fiber that’s about to be fused to another. It’s a fiddly task better suited to a lab, but Fichtner and his colleague Sara Klaasen are doing it atop a windy, frigid ice sheet.
After a day’s labor, they have spliced together three segments, creating a 12.5-kilometer-long cable. It will stay buried in the snow and snoop on the activity of Grímsvötn, a dangerous, glacier-covered Icelandic volcano.
Carolyn Wilke is a freelance science journalist.
