How Scientists Plan To Use Fiber Optic Technology To Detect Earthquakes And Tides

On July 16, 2020, Google Global Networking said they believed all the international submarine fiber optics could be used to create earthquake and tsunami warning systems that benefit the world. After years of study, Google experiments showed positive results for the use of subsea fiber optic cables in the study and detection of seismic activity.

Google added that this does not involve special equipment. The company uses optical fibers that carry data as pulses of light traveling at 204,190 kilometers per second. These pulses encounter distortions as they travel through the cables underwater, which are analyzed and corrected. The effort was inspired by a 2018 paper published in Science, where the authors analyzed a property of light that they were tracking to correct distortions called state of polarization, or SOP.

In late 2019, Google began testing this technique, and on January 28, 2020, after months of ocean silence, they detected a magnitude 7.7 earthquake off Jamaica, an astonishing 1,500 kilometers away from the closest point of one of their cables. Over the next few months, they continued detecting earthquakes, including a 6.1 earthquake on the East Pacific Rise and a 4.5 earthquake near Valparaiso, Chile.