Inside Caltech's Earthquake Early Warning Lab

When an earthquake strikes Los Angeles, seismologists and experts swiftly convene in a control room at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to gather data from sensors buried deep inside the San Andreas Fault and assess the fallout.

PCMag recently visited Caltech's Seismo Lab, where Dr. Lucy Jones, science adviser for the U.S. Geological Survey, and Professor Thomas Heaton, professor of Geophysics and Civil Engineering at Caltech, gave us a demo of the California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN), a real-time visualization of what might happen when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake hits.

Watch an earthquake's impact spread in the video below.


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As Professor Heaton cycled through a simulation on multiple screens, a loud countdown boomed throughout the control room: "Strong Shaking Expected In 23 Seconds!" Check it out in the video below; you almost forget it's a test.


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