Do Earthquakes cause Propagation dropouts? Can the RF-Seismograph see earthqakes?

(Sigh.)

You can lead a horse to water...

 

Did you also search that entire data set (not just post earthquake) and find any non-earthquake 80M signals?
In other words, are there only 80M signal events when there is an earthquake?
Don’t start your search with known earthquakes. Instead start your search with 80M signal events and then compare to the USGS earthquakes and still see if there is an 80% match.

 

That is a very reasonable hypothesis. There is a plausible mechanism by which the moon could trigger quakes, and just based on gut feel, it would not be surprising to find a correlation.

That's why it has been studied very many times, by amateurs, grad students, and professionals. And, somewhat surprisingly, no statistically significant correlation has been found.

https://phys.org/news/2018-01-great-earthquakes-affected-moon-phases.html

 

You still do not make any sense. If I understand correctly you wand to talk to your friend on the radio at 7PM, but for some weird reason you you turn you radio on at 8PM... and then you are wondering why nobody is there to chat!
There are a million of signals - do you want to help?
Alex

 

What does the moon phases have to do with anything? It is the location of the moon and the tide they cause that can trigger earthquakes.
Can you please keep to the subject!

 

Exactly the point some of us are trying to make. There ARE millions of signals. How do you know the ones after the earthquake are due to the earthquake and not just part of those millions?
For a large data set, it would be advantageous to use (or write) software to parse the data set instead of manually. Many times research projects are as much about writing tools to anaylize the data. If you are not able to do that, you may want to partner with a program at a University. This sounds like a good project for a masters student to work on.

Don’t get me wrong...you may be on to something and it’s interesting. But scientific research has to be defensible. Don’t take it the wrong way.

 

Welcome to peer review.

 

It is possible to 'bias' the code though so it's often best if someone else write the code based on a given set of scientific rules.

Here's the thing... yes, some of the comments could be considered peer review, but some of it is presented in a discouraging manner.

That earlier link to the NASA research seemed to support the hypothesis to some degree... so, let's relax, give Alex some slack, NASA has got his back!

 

One can get a free 30 day trial of several easy to use stat packages like Minitab and JMP (from SAS Institute). There are also a couple of open source packages around based on R, but I haven’t used them.

Minitab is pretty easy to use, often used in classrooms and seminars teaching statistics. JMP is more sophisticated but more learning curve (It was our standard at work).

 

The reference web site <https://scistarter.com/project/21138-RF-Seismograph> mentions that the "desired" antenna is a Hy-Gain HY-TOWER JR. Are there any other recommendations for those of us who live in HOA-restricted places (perhaps smaller, wideband receive-only magnetic loop antennas for monitoring purposes)?

Also, does the collected data need to be sent back via the Internet immediately or can it be collected and uploaded at a later time? I'm thinking of scenarios where the RF Seismograph is located in a remote or rural area that is not serviced by an Internet connection.

 

Hi Mark and Everyone;

For the RF-Seismograph to work properly the antenna needs to be resonant to some degree. Small wide-band antennas are not advisable. Magnetic loops could work if you have them tuned to each frequency before the measurement.
If there is a magnetic loop out there that will auto-tune to the frequency the rig is at it might be possible to use.
Right now the data is only stored on the local drive and we have not yet completed the database that will hold the measurements for each station. For now the RF-Seismograph will allow uploading an image of the measurement to our server in an 10min interval. Uploading logged data is available manually only for now.
Here is the manual for the Linux Version:
htttp://www3.telus.net/public/bc237/MDSR/SetupRF-SesimographLinux.pdf

All the best and 73;

Alex - VE7DXW

 

Question, Alex. Just how many other stations using RF-Seismograph are reporting similar patterns to yours? One, two, dozens, hundreds, thousands? I.E. would an RF-Seismograph station located hundreds of kilometres away show the same effects supposedly induced by an earthquake to match yours to any degree? I do think that you are possible seeing in the data what you want to see or confirmation bias, so you need to have a lot of double blind testing stations out there around the world recording data without knowing what they are recording the data for, and then have the collected data analyzed somewhere else by those who don't know specifically what they are looking for. Even if 1000 Rf-Seismograph stations recorded the same results you'd still have to eliminate all other possible cause and effects before you can to come to any concrete conclusion.

The problem for us is that with limited or random data, we humans are very good at seeing patterns therein when none actually exist--pareidolia and confirmation bias is our bane. Especially if a seed is firmly planted and rooted in one's mind. Like the "obvious" correlation between the full moon and increased crime rates all the cause of all out lunacy. Most people believe this except it's just 100% fallacy and not based in facts! The big, bright big full moon high in the sky is a very noticeable and memorable thing and so anything else happening that night tends to also be very noticeable and memorable. So the full moon must be the obvious cause? Except we tend to forgot about all those other nights when the same things occurred because they happened on less "memorable" nights! Stick a rarely seen big, bright comet up there in the heavens and boy do we humans immortalize all the really bad and/or really good thing caused by the comet, of course.

I'll probably get around to setting up an RF-Seismograph station with my FT857D because you've peaked my curiosity. I'd also like to compare its data with magnometer readings, Earthquake Canada, space weather, local atmospheric weather, tidal patterns, GPS TECU data, and people turning on those damn RF emitting LED lights (talk about seeing changes in 80 m noise levels!!!), and so on to rule all other possible explanations before jumping to any conclusion(s). I'd use a different, simpler, and much less expensive antenna, however. I'd like to use something that was sheltered from the elements to remove any possible effects cause by wind, rain, humidity, tremors, nearby RFI, etal. Our radio equipment is also subject to a type of "confirmation bias" just because we have nearby computers, wireless routers, cell phones, power line noise, cell towers, etc, that can cause confirmation bias of a sort.

Anyway, Amateur Radio needs your kind of enthusiasm and shaking things up (pun intended), Alex.


73,
Robert, VA3ROM

 

Hi Robert and everybody;

I can not agree with you more. This is quite out of the ordinary and we were very reluctant to make such a claim. But there is mounting evidence that earthquakes emit magnetic fields.

Pleas read this study which was published in Scientific American.
http://www.ep.sci.hokudai.ac.jp/~heki/pdf/Scientific_American_Vance2018.pdf
According to this earthquakes are big RF-noise sources and our measurement agree with the findings.

We only have one RF-Seismograph running for now. Our data is limited, but since we use HF we can hear quakes all around the world! So instead of just study one event we have studied 171 M6+ quakes over the 4 years we have recorded.
We welcome others to join in and confirm the findings....

Here is a summery of our study:
•171 total Earthquakes were studied: All M6+ events from the beginning of our recording (Aug 2016) to today. Events were provided by USGS and the quality of the data is high.
• 961 days of recorded data, 171 Quakes M6+, that amounts to one major quake every 5.6 days. Approximately 17.3% of background noise is effected by these strong events. Since we did only look at 6+ events, we can conclude that a lot of the background noise we monitor is created by smaller seismic events as well (and there is a lot more of them). If one looks at smaller quakes the (<M3.0) the earth really never stops shaking. There is a lot of energy even in small quakes and they are the major source of the rumble one hears when a HF rig is set to 160m or 80m.
• Only 15 quakes did not have RF noise associated with them.
• 1 day out of 961 was not recoverable due to data loss. In 26 cases the time of the disturbance did not match the time stated in the USGS report.
• In 122 Quakes (72%) we were able to see a noise increase of the 80m either before, after and before and after the quake released. The before and after is the most common one. More analysis is needed.
•Introduction and Study of Earthquakes with RF-Seismograph
http://www3.telus.net/public/bc237/MDSR/IntroductionRF-SeismographandEarthqakes.pdf
• The study is still continuing and we need your help to set up more monitoring stations.

All the best and thank you for your input;

Alex - VE7DXW

 

Earthquakes are not point events these can stretch out for hours even days with all the aftershocks... you should really look at the data we provided before making assumptions!
If you hear a commercial that is bad you are listening to the wrong frequency!

Alex

 

Always something new popping up on the radar. Quite interesting. Now the gathering of evidence!