Quake-Catcher Network. Ordinary Laptops Act as Earthquake Detectors. Most people use their laptops for work and Web browsing. Now you can add one more task to that list: earthquake detection. From the recent early-morning 4.4-magnitude jostle in Los Angeles to February's magnitude 8.8 disaster in Chile, ordinary laptops are increasingly acting as miniature seismic stations. They're part of a volunteer army known as the Quake-Catcher Network, which takes advantage of built-in accelerometers in newer laptops to transmit data about earthquakes to researchers at UC Riverside and Stanford University.
About 1,000 people from 61 countries have signed up so far. "It's providing additional data that can be fed into the seismic networks," said Elizabeth Cochran, a UC Riverside geoscientist. Sensing motion Cochran came up with the idea for the Quake-Catcher Network when she learned that most new laptops come equipped with accelerometers. "I figured that we could easily tap into this data and use it to record earthquakes," Cochran said. An affordable quake detector. Country clean-up project "Lets Do It 2008" / Teeme Ära 2008. For Citizen Scientists. Citizen Scientists have helped to answer serious scientific questions, provide vital data to the astronomical community, and have discovered thousands of objects including nebulas, supernovas, and gamma ray bursts.
NASA supports several resources which may be of interest to amateur and professional scientists alike. PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS Ancient Earth, Alien Earth Ancient Earth Alien Earth If you could visit the early Earth, you would find it a vastly different, inhospitable, and alien place. Yet, it was in this environment that life on this planet began and evolved. What do we know about the ancient Earth and how can that guide our search for habitable planets orbiting other stars? Come find out at a panel discussion featuring leading scientists in the fields of early Earth and habitability and co-sponsored by NASA, NSF and the Smithsonian Institution. Wednesday, August 20 5:30-6:30 p.m. Loans that change lives.