Sunday, June 7, 2009

Quake Vision

I lived in Moorpark California a few years ago. A small quiet town just north of LA (next to Thousand Oaks).

We had had a couple of 4 ptr earthquakes so I knew what they were. What happened one Sunday afternoon I never could have expected.

I was on the 2nd floor of my house. When suddenly I heard a sort of 'crack'. It was the kind of sound you know immediately, even though I had never heard anything like it before.

The sound was a tiny earthquake, except the ground barely shook and only for a second or two.

I could tell it came from just north of Burbank. And could feel it travel northward. It quickly passed by my area and onward towards Ventura.

The sharpness of the sound was amazing. But what was much more amazing was what it did to my senses.

For about 3/4 of a second, as the wave passed through my area, a new sense appeared to me. I could see into the ground, hundreds of feet down and around. For a split second, I had sonar. It just appeared in my mind. Like a picture of sorts. I could see the strata, the many layers of rock and sediment. It was astonishing.

It made me wonder if there wasn't an opportunity here for a new kind of survey and mining technology where sound waves would be used to give a person a virtual sense of the ground underneath. The potential here would be very lucrative to mining, oil companies etc.

So you heard it here first. All 2 of you that read this anyway. I'll take a modest commission ;)

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