Transcript:

music; ambience Kilauea tremors

“At the vent itself the gas is coming out, kind of breathing, every two seconds.”

In the absence of a giant stethoscope, scientists are using specialized microphones to monitor the inner workings of Kilauea volcano. Welcome to Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries. David Fee is a geophysics grad student at the University of Hawaii in Manoa. He’s recording and analyzing low frequency sounds emitted by the volcano, in hopes of understanding its mechanisms. In March of 2008, a massive explosion rocked Kilauea. We’re listening to an episodic tremor recorded 6 months after the explosion. The recording has been sped up to place it within the range of human hearing.

“There was no lava during this first explosion on March 19th. But there was a significant amount of low frequency sound. We recorded it very well by our array of microphones, which is about 7 kilometers away. And since that first explosion, we've recorded numerous other explosions from the volcano, as well as a constant background tremor, we call it a rumbling through the air. So a big part of this is to take our recordings and to correlate it with other technologies, seismic data. And of course, we record what goes through the air, and the seismometer records what's going through the ground. And by looking at how much energy goes into the ground, versus how much energy goes into the air, we can get a better idea of what the source is, what's causing the explosion.”

Collaboration with seismologists and other scientists is giving researchers a clearer picture of Kilauea’s internal activity. Check out our latest project, the Kids’ Science Challenge, where 3rd to 6th graders get to see their science ideas turned into realities. That’s kid science challenge dot com.

Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation.

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