Oct 19, 2021
3:30:13pm
3:30:13pm
U of U Professor reminds me of the guy with the musical rocks in What's Up Doc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhkGK4ga-Gs
Sorry article is behind a paywall.
"There is a serene—and deceptive—kind of quiet surrounding Bryce Canyon’s scarlet arches and hoodoos, but only because it’s hard to hear the rock music.
Rock formations, including the famed towers, fins, and arches of Utah’s Bryce Canyon, Arches, and Canyonlands national parks, emit a constant, unique vibrational resonant frequency. These are what Jeff Moore, a geoscientist at the University of Utah, calls their “songs.”
“I liken them to a voice,” Moore says. “It’s something that’s very real, and constantly around us, but human senses just aren’t tuned for that kind of frequency.”
That is until Moore found a way to listen. “This is something we borrowed from engineering and transferred to geoscience,” he says. For decades, buildings in many cities have been monitored to track their structural health. Moore realized the same tools would work on rocks.
Since 2015, he has been using sensitive, carefully calibrated seismometers (about the size of a coffee mug) to record the vibrations. The recordings are full of eerie rumbles, hums, and whines, much like a whale song or a bassline played on a glass jug.
This rock music is more than a mere curiosity. Moore and his fellow researchers use the data recorded to predict the probability and timeline of a formation’s impending collapse.
“An arch or a tower, it has a life cycle,” Moore says. “Arches have a moment of birth, and then they erode out over tens of thousands of years, and eventually they die—they collapse. This happens in a geologic time scale that’s not easy for humans to appreciate.”
Moreover, data on rock songs indicates that people could be having an outsize impact on those life cycles. Human activity is making the rocks shake harder, altering their frequencies. This can cause fractures to expand much faster, upping the likelihood of when they’ll come tumbling down."
Sorry article is behind a paywall.
"There is a serene—and deceptive—kind of quiet surrounding Bryce Canyon’s scarlet arches and hoodoos, but only because it’s hard to hear the rock music.
Rock formations, including the famed towers, fins, and arches of Utah’s Bryce Canyon, Arches, and Canyonlands national parks, emit a constant, unique vibrational resonant frequency. These are what Jeff Moore, a geoscientist at the University of Utah, calls their “songs.”
“I liken them to a voice,” Moore says. “It’s something that’s very real, and constantly around us, but human senses just aren’t tuned for that kind of frequency.”
That is until Moore found a way to listen. “This is something we borrowed from engineering and transferred to geoscience,” he says. For decades, buildings in many cities have been monitored to track their structural health. Moore realized the same tools would work on rocks.
Since 2015, he has been using sensitive, carefully calibrated seismometers (about the size of a coffee mug) to record the vibrations. The recordings are full of eerie rumbles, hums, and whines, much like a whale song or a bassline played on a glass jug.
This rock music is more than a mere curiosity. Moore and his fellow researchers use the data recorded to predict the probability and timeline of a formation’s impending collapse.
“An arch or a tower, it has a life cycle,” Moore says. “Arches have a moment of birth, and then they erode out over tens of thousands of years, and eventually they die—they collapse. This happens in a geologic time scale that’s not easy for humans to appreciate.”
Moreover, data on rock songs indicates that people could be having an outsize impact on those life cycles. Human activity is making the rocks shake harder, altering their frequencies. This can cause fractures to expand much faster, upping the likelihood of when they’ll come tumbling down."
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