Blue Collar Scientist

This is pretty cool:

The idea involves inviting the public to help monitor earthquakes by simply using their laptop computers at home. In doing so, the laptops join a network of computers designed to take a dense set of measurements that can help capture an earthquake.

Anyone with a personal computer will be able to participate in the experiment….

Because the project makes use of inexpensive motion sensors, called accelerometers, which are already in place as safety devices in most new laptops, participants incur no significant costs related to the project.

Nice! This is a BOINC project, so it runs on the same computing platform that has been used to process data looking for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations, figuring out how proteins fold, looking for signals in gravitational wave detectors, and so on.

According to Cochran, a person’s laptop needs to remain inactive for at least three minutes before the system starts up. “This is to get rid of noise in the data and to ensure that any movement the laptop’s accelerometer is detecting is indeed out of the ordinary,” she said.

Don’t have a laptop? Jealous? No problem:

“We also are working on developing an accelerometer which can be plugged into a desktop like a USB flash drive,” she said. “That way, we’d have less interference from typing on the keyboard. It also would allow for a more robust and reliable system, with computers running the software all of the time.”

The PI is not blind to the outreach possibilities:

Cochran also plans to involve K-12 schools through education and outreach. “We think this would be an excellent project for students to take an interest in,” she said, “so we’re hoping we’ll see more of their participation.”

Sign me up!