Marine Denolle has a PhD in geophysics and is currently leading a group of scientists that are using the "weak vibrations generated by Earth's oceans to produce virtual earthquakes that can be used to predict the ground movement and shaking hazard to buildings form real quakes". As technology is making its way more and more into the science world, some very cool studies are being done worldwide. This group from Stanford realize that "earthquakes aren't the only sources of seismic waves" and are taking advantage of this knowledge to help predict the severity of future earthquakes near fault lines like the major one in California, the San Andreas Fault. The way this works is the scientists use seismographs to pick up "ambient waves" that at first seemed to just interfere when trying to measure real earthquakes, but now allows them to "isolate certain waves" through "mathematical techniques". More specifically, "by studying how the ambient waves moved underground, the researchers were able to predict the actions of much stronger waves from powerful sources", coming to the conclusion that any earthquake in the Lost Angeles area any times soon would be strong and large, with a magnitude of at least 7.0 or greater. What I found most interesting was, thanks to the relatively inexpensive way of making this machine, "it could also be useful for forecasting ground motion in developing countries...you don't kneed large supercomputers to run the simulations". That's really taking advantage of technology and spreading our knowledge the way we should be.
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